The counselors and clinical staff at New Hope are pleased to provide answers and information on topics of concern to individuals and families coping with addiction and related issues. If you have a question you would like us to address, please submit it to ExpertQandA@newhopefoundation.org.

Q. I have friends who think they should teach their teenage children how to drink at home so that they don't get into trouble. Is this a good strategy for avoiding some of the high school and college drinking problems we hear so much about?

A. That's a great question and one that has a recent answer in a study published in the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs. The study suggests the risk of subsequent alcohol-related problems is greater with this approach, compared to the zero tolerance approach. While many believe that alcohol consumption is a normal part of teenage development and thus drinking with our teenage children may help them to how to drink responsibly this may not result in the harm-minimization expected. In this article, the authors examined the harm minimization and zero tolerance approaches to see how they impacted adolescent alcohol use and related harms in two communities - Washington State, USA, and Victoria, Australia.

The bottom line is that there were more incidences of harmful alcohol consequences among the teenagers whose parents supervised their drinking at home, compared to those in a zero-tolerance setting. The authors also found that those who started consuming alcohol earlier had a higher risk of still being drinkers by ninth grade and having an unpleasant experience with alcohol. The authors concluded that the harm-minimization approach seems to encourage alcohol consumption and does not appear to instill responsible and safe drinking.

Source: "Influence of Family Factors and Supervised Alcohol Use on Adolescent Alcohol Use and Harms: Similarities Between Youth in Different Alcohol Policy Contexts"
Barbara J. McMorris, Richard F. Catalano, Min Jung Kim, John W. Toumbourou, Sheryl A. Hemphill J. Stud. Alcohol Drugs, 72, 418-428, 2011