Many parents believe that allowing their children to drink at home will make it less likely that they’ll be off drinking with their friends. In fact, in my research shows the exact opposite. The kids who are allowed to drink at home, even on just special occasions, are overwhelmingly more likely to be off drinking with their friends than are kids who are not allowed to drink at home. Parents also may think that they’re keeping their kids safe if they have what they call a car-key basket. I wrote a column called The Myth of the Car-Key Basket. Because what kids says is they’re going to put their keys in the basket, the parents go upstairs and watch TV, and they drink, they take their keys and they drive home. It’s not keeping kids safe. And by the way, automobiles are not the only way that kids are dying as a result of the alcohol use. They’re falling down the stairs, they aspirate on their own vomit, and they’re falling off of roofs. So there’s lot of ways that alcohol can be destructive in the life of a young person. Allowing young people to drink to drink at home, does them no favors. Parents also often site European countries, saying that kids that come from European countries with lower drinking ages don’t have these problems. Well that’s not true. In fact, every European country, with the exception of Turkey, with a lower drinking age than the United States has higher youth intoxication rate than does the United States.