“It is time to take the huge problem of alcohol consumption in Brazil seriously, if we want to improve the health of children and teenagers”, doctor Evelyn Eisenstein, the Working Group on Drugs and Violence Coordinator from the Brazilian Society of Pediatrics (SBP), during the Special Interest Group (SIG) of Children and Teenagers broadcast, held on June 9. The videoconference was made possible by the Telemedicine University Network (Rute), an initiative coordinated by RNP that supports, deploys and encourages telemedicine projects and has 57 SIGs in various specialties and subspecialties.

This meeting, with the theme of ‘Alcohol, Youngsters and Public Health’, was conducted by Doctor Maristela Monteiro, member of the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), from Washington (EUA). The subject was addressed to highlight the risks to youngsters who are growing in a society that favors the excessive consumption of alcohol, either by advertisements, which frequently align the consumption of alcoholic beverages to parties, leisure and sexual activity, or due to the fact that beer has become a national symbol.

For the experts who partook in the SIG, the problem is that the parents and the youth know the dimension of the damages caused by alcohol consumption, such as violence, severe intoxications, suicide, homicide, drownings, child neglect, domestic abuse, poor school and professional performance. In the long term, there may still be dozens of chronic diseases, which include breast cancer, hypertension, cirrhosis, cancers of the digestive tract, neuropathies and the dependence itself. 

International data and Brazilian studies presented by Maristela point out that the excessive alcohol use is not an exclusively national reality. Alcohol consumption has increased in Latin America, where it is the most consumed, least regulated beverage.

Doctor Maristela stressed the need for professional associations, for example, to demand a greater regulation of the consumption, including the increase of taxes and prices, limitation of selling points and times, effective sanitary inspection and especially the limit on sales for children and teenagers under 18 years old.

Another important role of health professionals is that of guiding parents, since the child’s first days of life, that alcohol is also a drug and that they have an important role to monitor and guide the children. This includes not consuming alcohol in excess in front of the children and teenagers, avoid the glamorization of drinking and the notion that those who start to drink at an early age must be proud, not offering drinks to children and teenagers or allow the consumption at home. If parents notice changes in behavior that may be linked to excessive alcohol consumption, they need to talk with the teenager in a confidential and neutral manner, without judging them for the use.