<p>last night my college D had some friends over for new years eve- small group, and I gasp gave them some bottles of champagne- </p>
<p>no one was driving, there was no hard booze, and when i got home, no one was drunk- and there was even some champagne left</p>
<p>if I can’t trust my D and her close friends by NOW with some wine or champagne, nothing magical will happen in a year</p>
<p>as for Pot, my mom has her medical card…oh now, my mom the addict!!!</p>
<p>rather a smoke of weed for her then scotch or pills, to be honest, much fewer side affects</p>
<p>I absolutely always find it hilarious when people refer to drinking, then justify it with noting a difference between hard booze, or ‘just’ wine, or ‘just’ champagne, or ‘just’ beer. Folks, it’s ALL alcohol and anyone can get into trouble, no matter what they’re drinking. Just because it’s one kind of drink, and not another, it doesn’t change the fact that a person is drinking (this includes legal adults).</p>
<p>Also, in our state, as of today, a person under age 21 will receive a three-month driver’s license suspension for any court supervision for possession, consumption, purchase or receipt of alcohol. It’s not just about whether they drive or not anymore.</p>
<p>I don’t think anyone is justifying drinking wine vs whiskey, vodka. I think that’s what a lot of people drink. We only drink wine and champagne at home, therefore that’s what I would offer my daughter. I am not going to offer her something we don’t have in the house. She will also have a cosmo with me if we happen to make it. We made sure we chose a state to live in where we could offer as much booze to our kids as possible.</p>
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<p>Oh, but I hear this all the time from parents - it’s just wine… no hard stuff, or, we don’t keep hard liquor in the house. They are somehow trying to justify that what they’re doing isn’t so bad because it’s not shots or hard liquor, etc. When you offer your kids alcohol, be realistic - it doesn’t matter what kind of alcohol it is, you have to be diligent with ALL of them.</p>
<p>Yes, people can get in trouble when they drink. And people can get in no trouble at all. Some people consider drinking immoral. Some join enological societies. Some become alcoholics. Some live long and healthy lives drinking a glass of wine with dinner. There are all sorts of people. There can be “one-size-fits-all” answer to “to drink or not to drink” question.</p>
<p>teriwtt: Obviously it’s all alcohol, but the “just wine” or “just beer” doesn’t come from not realizing that it’s alcohol, it comes from the fact that most of the trouble making, drunken teenage behavior results from hard alcohol consumption, in the form of shots and so forth.</p>
<p>teriwtt - I just wanted to point out that while you are correct in saying that you have to be “diligent” with beer and wine as well as hard alcohol, there was a time when the law in some areas (Washington, DC, for example) had different legal ages for beer and wine (18) as opposed to hard alcohol (21). Of course that has changed since changed, but that’s how it was years ago.</p>
<p>parabella, you made a good point - there is no “on-size-fits-all” answer to this question.</p>
<p>Actually, LIMOM, that’s a great point, and in fact in some countries the law STILL differentiates between beer/wine/champagne and hard aclohol (in Germany, for example).</p>
<p>If you’re killing brain cells in college, how do you expect to go to grad/professional school or get a job?</p>
<p>yes, no one who ever drank some in college got a good job</p>
<p>and it takes alot more wine to get loaded than it does vodka, so yes there is a difference</p>
<p>and when I came home, there was beer and wine and champagne still left, so these adults were responsible in their consumption</p>
<p>I grew up in NY and it was 18 to drink, a WHOLE generation of Americans, an amazing generation to be sure, came of age when drinking was 18!!! And somehow we as a country did mighty well indeed, with all those brain cells killed legally</p>
<p>wonder how our parents and their parents survived with a drinking age of 18, egad…</p>
<p>I don’t consider an 18, 19 or 20 year old a kid, not at all</p>
<p>they can vote, sign a contract and die for our country, so a beer isn’t such a horrid thing</p>
<p>as for diligence, if you keep referring to young adults as Kids, well, they wlll act like that</p>
<p>I wiped out my whole college dorm floor freshman year with my family’s secret recipe for Union League Punch. I mixed it up in a trashcan. That was the first of many drunken nights in college. I managed to get into law school and have a job (I think I still have it, I’ve been on vacation for a week or so). I wish college kids didn’t drink so much. It scares me and I think it is bad on many levels. But they do. Drink. A lot. Many of them. I’ll keep hoping and praying.</p>
<p>^^^Is the recipe still a secret?</p>
<p>^^^I was wondering the same thing! MOWC, you’ll have to share…lol.</p>
<p>I think one of our “job” as parents is to teach our children how to behave responsibly by example and in practice. And if your family has a history of addictive behavior it would probably be best to be abstainers by example.</p>
<p>However if this is not the case and if those in your nuclear family are not abstainers I see no reason why parents should not offer their college age children a beer or wine at an appropriate time IF it is legal to do so in your state and IF the student is not about to drive for 3+ hours.</p>
<p>I have taught our son that alcohol is not a problem when merely viewed as another beverage. People are asking for trouble if the are consuming for any other reason.</p>
<p>They will be exposed to alcohol in college so I believed it was better for our child to be introduced to the evil brew under our supervision. It seems to have worked out well thus far as he is a college senior.</p>
<p>I’ll have to dig up the proportions, but it includes 7Up, Cointreau, Vodka (maybe it was gin), and orange juice. It wiped out the family on many a Christmas get-together! It literally is the punch served for many years at the hoity-toity Philadelphia Union League Club. I had a relative who was a chemist and figured it out by tasting and experimenting.</p>
<p>MOWC - when you dig up those proportions, let us know. It sounds better than I expected…lol. That’s so funny about your chemist relative though.</p>
<p>After seeing my friend’s daughter who was an angel go to college and then dropout in Junior year due to a Marijuana induced mania and a slight alcohol problem all I can say is that “the older I get the less I know”</p>
<p>We hope that we have sent a positive message to our kids once they leave the nest, but some kids are impressionable and some schools are just dysfunctional as heck when it comes to drugs and alcohol.</p>
<p>I don’t think you can blame it on schools. I think it has more to do with maturity of kids. Some parents may think it’s better not to expose their kids to anything while in high school, but often those kids are the ones that go wild in colleges. Many of them pull themselves together after a while, but some of them are just not equiped to do that. It’s not just with alcohol, it has to do with drug, sex, or skill of time management because their parents have micro managed them most of their lifes.</p>