Letters to the Editor, March 9th: On teenage binge drinking, war in the Middle East and late post

Sir, – It’s March and the Transition Year Ball (TY) season has swung into gear. Fifteen and 16-year-olds are stepping into their glad rags, hiring hotel rooms and whooping it up before they enter fifth year and the dreaded Leaving Cert looms.

Parents allow this to happen. “They’re good kids, just having a bit of fun, letting off a bit of steam,” is the standard remark. Sixteenth birthday parties come and go, house parties where “no alcohol is served” but the majority drink, sitting around kitchen tables, swigging vodka out of naggins while parents turn a blind eye.

This is a culture that has normalised binge drinking in kids as young as 15. We are to blame – parents, policy makers and the drinks industry.

Despite reports that alcohol consumption overall has fallen in recent years this is not the case with youth binge drinking.

Alcohol Action Ireland report that youth drinking in Ireland has surged by 12 per cent over the past decade, from 66 per cent in 2016 to 78 per cent in 2025 and it is their main area of concern. Of those, almost two thirds regularly binge drink and one in three drinkers have an alcohol use disorder

There is robust evidence that parents who give their underage children alcohol often unwittingly facilitate the early initiation of not just any use but heavy use of alcohol in later years. The evidence is very firm in conclusion: “Don’t expose young teens to alcohol.”

Time to call TY balls and 16th birthday parties out for the drink-fuelled binges that they are and find another way for TY kids to let off steam. How parents drink also has an impact on teenage drinking habits. When it comes to binge- drinking, “the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree” . –Yours, etc,

DR CATHERINE CONLON,

Ballintemple,

Cork.

Long time waiting

Sir, – My daughter and granddaughters posted an 80th birthday card to me from Britain. It was posted in plenty of time on January 18th, correctly addressed and stamped. It arrived in Terenure on March 4th. This has got to be a record.

I am treating it as my Mother’s Day card.