Quarter of Spanish teen boys regularly get drunk

29 September 2005

MADRID — One in four Spanish teenage boys gets drunk almost every week, a new survey has revealed.

The health ministry report found 27.3 percent of boys aged 14-18 get drunk once every ten days.

The finding emerged from a campaign to stop rising teenage drinking in Spain, a country not usually noted for high levels of teenage drinking.

The government, though, is worried about a growing tendency among teenagers to get drunk at the weekend and to combine drinking with taking illegal drugs.

But despite the survey’s findings, only nine percent of those questioned said they thought they drank too much or even enough.

Health minister Elena Salgado said it was of great concern that the “young of today will show the patterns of drinking of tomorrow”.

Rising drinking among teenagers parallels patterns among adults in Spain.

Between 2002-04, the number of people regularly getting drunk in the 15-19 year-old age group has doubled, from 22 percent to 44 percent among boys and from 10.5 percent to 24 percent among girls.

The same has happened among those aged between 32-64.

Drinking alcohol is the third biggest problem among developed countries after hypertension and smoking, according the World Health Organisation.

Each year in Spain, 4,000 people are admitted to hospital suffering from some form of psychosis related to alcohol consumption – a figure which has risen 103 percent in the past decade.

[Copyright EFE with Expatica]

Subject: Spanish news