(NECN) - There have been several underage drinking incidents reported in New England recently - where both the youths involved and their parents have gotten into trouble with the law.
Over the weekend, Wrentham, Mass. Police arrested dozens of young people caught drinking in a motel.
Dr. Claire McCarthy, Pediatrician and Medical Communications Editor at Boston Children's Hospital, joined "The Morning Show" to discuss the issue.
She shared the following statistics:
- Seeing beer and liquor in ads in TV may promote drinking as early as seventh grade and lead to alcohol-related problems just a few years later, a new study suggests.
- The more ad exposure the teens reported--and the more they enjoyed the commercials--the more they drank by 10th grade the researchers found.
- Examples of problems include failing to do homework, attending school drunk, passing out and getting into fights.
Local
- Research doesn't prove that liquor advertising caused drinking, but drinking by young teens was less prevalent before the heyday of TV liquor ads.
- The research team recruited nearly 4,000 seventh graders and questioned them about use of beer, wine or liquor and exposure to liquor ads...they kept tabs on many of them through 10th grade.
- Click here to read the latest CDC Underage Drinking Statistics from Oct. 2012
- Although drinking by persons under the age of 21 is illegal, people aged 12 to 20 years drink 11 percent of all alcohol consumed in the United States
- More than 90 percent of this alcohol is consumed in the form of binge drinks
- Alcohol is the most commonly used and abused drug among youth in the United States.
