Alcohol Consumption and Correlates among Children in the European Community

The first survey on adolescent drinking in the European Community in 1990 showed that differences in the prevalences of weekly drinkers by country are large. Prevalences in Italy and Greece are more than twice the average on the one hand, and hardly any child drinks weekly in Ireland on the other. Explanatory variables from three scientific domains, i.e., drinking among friends, drinking by parents, alcohol permissiveness by parents, pocket money, weekly smoking, and disco visits, are related with weekly drinking, confirming the theory of different mechanisms.