The marijuana-alcohol tradeoff is as old as the hills.
It’s difficult to stop college students from using intoxicants that impair their judgment, in large part because they tend to be using intoxicants in order to impair their judgment. They have a conflicted relationship with their own judgment, and sometimes they deal with that by suppressing it.
Current college senior here at Michigan who has experimented plenty. I have also worked in a capacity in student affairs where I had to intervene in situations in which students had too much to drink and harm was caused.
What I can tell you with high confidence is that taking the approach of being priggish about alcohol will probably not work and will likely do damage. I still remember one of my friends who was suffering from acute alcohol abuse who convinced the people she was with to delay calling an ambulance for an extended period of time because her parents would punish her severely if they found out. Even the University knows this. The alcohol education course they require all freshmen to take does not assume the freshmen do not or will not drink, and provides them with practical advice on drinking safely if they choose to do so (while still discouraging it and letting them know of the legal/medical/personal risks).
If your child is going to a school with an established drinking culture (Bucknell qualifies, as does almost every state flagship, many LACs, most med-large non-religious Privates, and all the Ivies), I think it is safe to assume your child will experiment at the very at least. Educating them on the risks and providing practical advice is probably more constructive (things like serving sizes for drinks, watching their drinks, pouring their own drinks, drinking plenty of water and eating before going out, etc.).
These are my views only and should not be taken as the opinion of the University of Michigan, medical advice, or legal advice.
My own opinion is that it’s time we go back to a tiered drinking age – 18 for beer, 21 for wine, liquor, etc. Back in the day we could go get a beer at the student union. Most kids learned responsibility. What we have done with prohibition is drive drinking underground and encouraged the use of hard liquors like vodka – clear and flavored goes into an empty water bottle and nobody would know. And then we get into the mixed message problem – it’s “ok” to drink at a tailgate for the big game (we couldn’t possibly arrest everyone and don’t want to disappoint ESPN).
@ucbalumnus posted
My nephew belonged to an Asian fraternity and his fraternity probably had a harsher pledge period and partied more than other fraternities at his school, which also happened to be my daughters’ school. Both of my daughters were very involved in Greek life at their school and they said that was the case. There are some Asians who cannot tolerate alcohol as much, but it is not true that (in general)Asians drink less than white people. If you should go to Asian parties, they would tend to drink very good whiskeys and cognacs, not water down wine.
At the risk of generalization…a lot Asian kids coming from strict family tend to party more the first year before they find their “norm,” and most of their parents do not believe their kids drink or do drugs.
I once took a course in which we learned that young people from cultures (and presumably families) where alcohol is taboo are actually more likely to drink to excess if they do drink. I understand the reaction to alcoholism in the family (many of us can say that) but encouraging a black and white, “just say no” kind of perspective can result in problems. In fact, that kid who ends up in the ER with his or her first experience drinking, often didn’t drink at all in HS.
For my kids (and, again, one cannot drink due to health issues/meds), most of the drinking occurred in small gatherings that would hardly be called parties. It was pretty civilized and they are still good friends year later.
Hanging out with kids who don’t drink may mean hanging out with a lot of kids in recovery, which is an option. Young people who developed problem in high school may be more likely to live in a substance free dorm as well.
Anecdotes about specific people or specific fraternities may be capturing outliers. Research suggests that you are observing outliers.
https://www.samhsa.gov/data/sites/default/files/NSDUHresultsPDFWHTML2013/Web/NSDUHresults2013.pdf (page 38-40, including figure 3.3 on page 39)
https://bmcemergmed.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12873-015-0050-5
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22224754
https://pubs.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/arh40/152-160.htm
Looking back on my own life, I think overall, it would have been better if I abstained. All I know is I would not have missed out on any good things by not drinking except getting buzzed or throwing up.
As a parent, I do not demonize alcohol. My kids are very close to my father and know his journey and how alcohol affected his life negatively for many years. We have a lot of family gatherings where people drink. My kids simply have no interest in drinking at this point in life.
My niece was permitted to drink alcohol during hs at home, because my brother thought it would stop her indulging too much in college. Well, that backfired.
I think the best advice I’ve gotten here is for my son to go with his gut feeling regarding the campuses he visited and to really understand what a campus has to offer if a kid doesn’t want to spend weekends drinking.
While there will be kids who aren’t into drinking at every school, I do feel that if yours falls into that category, a school with a very large party culture, with such a high percentage of students in Greek life, and in a rural area, is probably a poor fit.
My daughter goes to an LAC with no Greek life that is located in a major metropolitan area. While there are most certainly partiers and binge-drinkers (in fact, recently she and some other students had to call an ambulance for student at a party), there are also plenty of kids who don’t drink at all or drink occasionally in moderation. There are plenty of non-drinking things to do for fun both on and off campus. My daughter does not feel like she is in the minority at school just because she is more interested in activities that don’t involve alcohol. She’ll have a drink or two at a party, but she doesn’t actually go to very many parties because she and her friends prefer other things.
I do think that the absence of Greek life and not being geographically isolated have a good amount to do with the atmosphere at her school. Not because it stops people from drinking, but because the types of students who are interested in the crazy college party culture would probably never apply to her school.
Best of luck to your son, whatever he decides!
I think the key is to have easy and abundance access to other things going on, where social life isn’t dependent on parties. My daughter has been to a total of one party where alcohol was served all semester at her big state flagship. Most weekends she’s going to the theater, to concerts, to sporting events, to movie nights, living community “field trips”, etc… Her entire campus is dry/substance free so the parties that serve are usually house parties off campus, which aren’t the easiest to get to if you have no car.
I also agree with the above poster who commented about preparing our kids to be safe because no matter where they go, there will be drinking. A boy in my daughter’s dorm had to be taken to the hospital for alcohol poisoning the first month of school. My daughter and her roommates were the ones that raised the alarm with the RA because his GF was too worried he’d get in trouble and didn’t want to say anything. He would have aspirated and could have died had he not been with trained professionals when he started vomiting while unconscious.
Also, especially for daughters, even if you don’t think they’ll ever drink, please have the discussion about not taking open drinks from anyone. There is an older video that shows how quickly someone can slip something into a drink (search “roofied drink” on youtube).
I do think the media brain washes people into drinking. For example, all these British detectives always seem to be drinking wine at home. Lol. One beer per month is my intake these days. Even coffee, I limit it to one large cup a day in the morning.
My son is in college in Montreal…drinking age is 18. The job of the Floor Fellows (RAs) is to make sure everyone is safe. The school literally says “they are not your child’s parent”. The school definitely has a bit of a work hard play hard culture. However, there is no hiding…and there is a culture of taking care of someone that needs help.
Now contrast that with U.S. schools. My friend’s buddy at a New England LAC had two kids in his dorm taken to the hospital with alcohol poisoning. Why? They have to discretely drink it in their room. So they drink a lot and fast…and hide it. Then they had a huge debate about getting help…because they were worried about getting into trouble. And yes, when they finally got help they did get in trouble.
Drinking is going to happen at college. And no it is not for everyone. But our priority should be safety not a nanny state.
Unfortunately applicable to all drinks, alcoholic or not, at a social gathering.
Many states, towns and school now have “no punishment” rules for situations like this. You can’t use it every weekend, but they do want to encourage students to call for help.
The loss of easily available beer has led underage students to consume whatever can be most easily concealed when transporting into the dorm. That means more hard liquor and drugs, fewer kegs/cases of cheap beer. It used to take a lot of beer, literal pounds of liquid, to get a life-threatening BAC, and you had to manage it before sleep or illness took over. Liquor works far differently in that it allows you to get into trouble much quicker: three or four shots in a plastic cup of Mt Dew is way easier to get through than four cans of beer, and if you don’t like beer you don’t drink. You can usually find some mix that’ll let you choke your vodka down.
Letting 19 year olds drink beer is no solution for kids that are going to have trouble handling alcohol, but it’s not as dangerous a drunk, and removing some of the fear of prosecution would encourage kids to reach out for help more readily. (I know they are told that today, but they still fear consequences.)
Most kids don’t like beer. Beer isn’t a solution at all.
@StPaulDad my daughter is in Scotland where all is legal and the most popular drink is something called a Pablo which involves 2 shots of vodka. Beer isn’t even on the list.
Thanks to all for your contributions to this thread. I’m finding it useful as DH and I are trying to have more conversations with our kids about alcohol. We have both lost family members to addiction (not dead, but almost worse).
The latest research is telling us that the longer teens wait to start drinking, the less likely they are to end up with a drinking problem. Not just binge drinking, but frequency of drinking when under 17 correlates with later addiction. So, we encourage our kids to wait until 21 or (to be realistic) at least 18 to try alcohol.
I know a lot of CC’ers say that kids will not be pressured to drink in college. It is likely true that no one is going to stand over you yelling, “Chug, chug, chug!” or disparage your choice to abstain. However, the pressure to drink can be strong, especially for kids who do not feel socially secure.
For example, I was a shy, immature, 17 year-old freshman who ended up in a “cool” sorority. I wasn’t comfortable at parties with boys and older students. There was no activity other than small talk, drinking, drinking games, and (mostly drunken) dancing. No person ever pressured me to drink–but the situation, the culture and my awkwardness provided definite incentive.
No matter where our kids go to college, we will encourage them to actively seek out EC’s that revolve around a shared passion–intramural sports, the arts, outdoor adventure, community service, etc. Although my sorority ended up being positive in many ways, I hope none of our kids rush as freshman.
I think the OP is right to be wary about a school where Greek life is a big part of campus and the percentage of regular freshman drinkers is high. I also agree with people who caution about small rural schools, and small non-Greek schools where varsity sports teams function like fraternities. Maybe the biggest factor is the student. If they have the maturity level, lack of FOMO, good coping skills, and social confidence, they could have a healthy social life at any school. But I would say that most kids I know are not rock solid in those areas.
Does it distinguish between drinking under parental supervision versus otherwise? Seems like the risk of trouble when the first drink is as a 17 year old under parental supervision versus as an 18 year old in a fraternity party may not align strictly by age.