drink problems.

 

Children as young as 12 are being diagnosed as alcoholics amid growing concerns about binge-drinking in Britain, an investigation by The Independent on Sunday reveals today.

 

Record numbers of pre-teens and teenagers now require hospital treatment for drink-related disorders, the exclusive nationwide survey shows.

 

The findings prove there is a hidden epidemic of child alcoholism, resulting in thousands of youngsters being treated in hospital each year for alcohol poisoning, liver disease and drink-related psychiatric illnesses.

 

Doctors warn that conditions such as cirrhosis of the liver are now starting to appear in people who are still in their teens, prompting calls for special detoxification clinics to be set up around the country for teenage drinkers.

 

Dr Sarah Harris, an expert on alcoholism at the Royal College for General Practitioners, said: "There is currently no national provision for youngsters addicted to drink but it would be entirely appropriate to have some adolescent clinics for alcohol abuse."

 

New figures reveal that Britain's teenagers are drinking twice as much as they did a decade ago, with half of all 13-year-olds consuming more than 10 units a week. The amount being consumed by 11- to 13-year-olds has gone up almost threefold in the same period, with doctors citing the cultural shift towards 24-hour drinking.

They are also worried that the drinks industry is deliberately targeting the young, promoting alcopops - heavily sweetened, attractively packaged alcoholic drinks - and offering alcohol at historically low prices.

 

Whose to blame, the kids themselves, the parents, the drinks industry or society as a whole.

The parents partly, especially if the kids are about 11/12, and the kids themselves. They're the ones drinking it.

My cousin keeps getting really ill from drink, she's had a kidney infection, you'd think it'd be enough to make her see sense...

Parents are they biggest cause plus a general breakdown in morality among the majority of the young in this country plus peer pressure from friends meaning they have to be hard if they want to be in the gang and they think drinking and smoking will make them look hard plus also the behaviour of celebrities, the young see all the celebs getting drunk every night and collapsing in the street so think it is cool to copy them and so on, then there is Reality TV like Big Brother that ply the contestants with alcohol night after night with the intention of them getting drunk and having a laugh and a shag etc, a child seeing Big Brother will assume that you need to be drunk to have a good time in the UK which is rubbish, that show sets an appalling example

 

We do live in a degenerate society and this is just part of it

Edited February 18, 200718 yr by Kimi Raikkonen

New figures reveal that Britain's teenagers are drinking twice as much as they did a decade ago, with half of all 13-year-olds consuming more than 10 units a week.

 

To be honest I really doubt that figure -_-