Today's Devotional
February 6, 2006
Subject: It's Okay For Adults, Isn't It?
Proverbs 23:31 - "Look not thou upon the wine when it is red, when it giveth his colour in the cup, when it moveth itself aright."
As I watched the Super Bowl last night, I couldn't help but notice the large number of beer commercials that were shown and of course that is nothing new. Most of the major sporting events are heavily sponsored by such enterprises. I then looked up some stats on underage drinking to see if perhaps we're sending the wrong message.
Here are a few things I found:
1) A national survey of our American
youth found that on average, young people begin drinking at about age
13, but some start even younger. By the time they are high school seniors, more than 80 percent have used alcohol and approximately 64 percent have been drunk.
When adolescents move on to college, they bring their drinking habits with them: more than 40 percent of college students are binge
drinkers.
2) In 1998, 10.4 million current drinkers were under legal age (age 12-20). Of these, 5.1 million were binge drinkers, including 2.3 million heavy
drinkers.
3) Parental and Peer Influences: Parents’ drinking behavior and favorable attitudes about drinking have been associated with adolescents’ initiating and continuing drinking. Early initiating of drinking has been identified as an important risk factor for later alcohol-related problems. Lack of parental support, monitoring, and communication also has been significantly related to frequency of drinking, heavy drinking, and drunkenness among adolescents. Peer drinking and acceptance also influences adolescent drinking behaviors.
Proverbs talks about the deception of wine, but I think we have a problem in this country that we don't recognize when it comes to the way we influence our children in relationship to alcohol. Instead of glamorizing it, we should move its advertising to late night like much other adult material. After all, it's supposed to be okay for adults isn't it?
Carlen
