It appears that risk-takers may be more likely to skip school, to drink at an early age, to drive too fast, to engage in unprotected sex, and to use illegal drugs. It is important to distinguish between drinking and abuse. Knowledge of what is acceptable and unacceptable drinking behavior should be clear. The abuse of alcohol should not be tolerated under any circumstance. People who are going to drink as adults should gradually learn how to drink responsibility and in moderation.
Alcohol is neither a poison nor a magic elixir capable of solving life's problems.
Stigmatizing alcohol serves no practical purpose, contributes to undesirable emotionalism and ambivalence, and increases the problems it seeks to solve. In stigmatizing alcohol, reductionists may unintentionally trivialize the use of illegal drugs and thereby encourage their use. Or, especially among younger students, they create the false impression that parents who use alcohol in moderation are drug abusers whose good example they should reject. Thus, their misguided effort to equate alcohol use with illicit drugs is likely to be counterproductive. Make systematic efforts to clarify and promote the distinctions between acceptable and unacceptable drinking.