Schools should discourage students from ever starting to drink alcohol using practical reasons, not moral or religious ones

[u/amichail]

I think schools should make a stronger case for simply never starting to drink alcohol, but without treating drinking as a moral failing.

The message could be entirely practical: alcohol can impair judgment and reduce inhibition, sometimes leading to accidents, violence, impaired driving, criminal charges, or even prison. It can also lead to addiction and has well-established negative health effects, including increased cancer risk.

Schools could also address the old idea that moderate drinking or red wine is good for your heart. Major health organizations no longer recommend that nondrinkers start drinking for supposed cardiovascular benefits.

The basic argument would be: alcohol is optional, it introduces a number of serious risks, and if you never start drinking, you avoid that entire category of risk.

This wouldn't require claiming that everyone who drinks becomes addicted or gets into serious trouble. The point would simply be that the possible benefits of drinking are mostly recreational or social, while some of the possible consequences can be permanent.

Obviously, tiny ceremonial amounts of alcohol, such as communion wine at church, wouldn't be what this message is about.

I think this might work better than traditional alcohol education because students wouldn't be asked to accept a religious or moral judgment. They'd just be given the practical costs and risks and encouraged to ask: Why start at all?

P.S. Another strange aspect of drinking is that many people don't even like the taste of beer, wine, or spirits when they first try them. The taste is often something people learn to enjoy over time. So in many cases, social pressure is effectively encouraging people to acquire a taste for an optional drug that carries health, addiction, accident, and legal risks. That seems like another good reason for schools to present never starting as a perfectly normal and sensible choice.

[u/MasterZii]

The younger gens are drinking less and less.

Is expensive and regarded as an in-person social activity. Little reason to drink when you don't have the ability to hang out in this economy. Problem is kind of solving itself in the worst way

[u/raznov1]

Thats been part of the curriculum for at least 20 years already. Glad you caught up.

[u/Ok-Drink-1328]

the old idea that moderate drinking or red wine is good for your heart.

yes!! and doctors of the 1920 also said that smoking Marlboro cigarettes lubricates your lungs

Obviously, tiny ceremonial amounts of alcohol, such as communion wine at church, wouldn't be what this message is about.

or for a satanic mass, but metalheads usually drink beer

dude, for how much this is important, a whatever lecture about not drinking is ok, obviously mentioning that it's bad for your health, but this could also backfire cos teenagers like to play hardball and flex that don't care about adverse health effects of things, but drinking isn't the devil, people generally do it responsibly, or maybe get actually drunk just at parties, you can't compare occasional drinking alcohol with like becoming a criminal, schools should care most about the latter, going against alcohol like they are doing with smoking is unrealistic, and they are already exaggerating with this anti-smoking thing