Study: Italian Teens Frown on Binge Drinkers

Getting drunk may be considered a normal part of having fun for youngsters in northern Europe, but not so in Italy where teenagers look down on friends who drink too much.

Italians consume about as much alcohol as people from Britain or Finland, but a “Mediterranean” approach to drink means they are far less prone to binge drinking and drunkenness, according to research presented this week. Only 7 percent of Italians aged between 15 and 24 get drunk at least three times a week compared with Denmark, which has the greatest proportion of young binge drinkers in Europe, where 36 percent of youths regularly drink to excess. “There are protective cultural factors in Italy,” said Enrico Tempesta, a scientist at Italy’s Permanent Observatory on Alcohol and Youth, a government-sponsored body which held a symposium on the issue this week. “Here, children and teenagers disapprove and tend to exclude from their circle a contemporary who gets drunk,” he said on Tuesday. According to the Observatory, drinking habits split Europe in two, with northern Europeans treating drink as a weekend recreational activity while those in the south tend to do their drinking with meals. This ‘Mediterranean’ drinking, which makes alcohol part of a regular diet, means drink loses the “transgressive attributes it has in northern Europe,” the body said.(Source: Observatory on Alcohol and Youth: Reuters Health News: October 2004.)