By Robert Preidt, HealthDay ReporterOriginal Source: health.usnews.com

THURSDAY, Jan. 25, 2018 (HealthDay News) -- Parents are mistaken if they think giving their teens alcohol removes drinking-related risks, a groundbreaking Australian study finds.

In many countries, parents provide alcohol to their underage kids as a way to introduce them to drinking carefully, and believe it will protect them from the harms of heavy drinking.

But the practice appears to do more harm than good. Young people who got alcohol from parents were more likely than other teens to also get it elsewhere, the investigators found."Our study is the first to analyze parental supply of alcohol and its effects in detail in the long term, and finds that it is, in fact, associated with risks when compared to teenagers not given alcohol," said lead author Richard Mattick. He is a professor of drug and alcohol studies at the University of New South Wales.The study finding "reinforces the fact that alcohol consumption leads to harm, no matter how it is supplied," he added.

For the study, Mattick's team followed more than 1,900 Australian teens, whose ages ranged from about 12 to 18, over a six-year period.

During those years, as teens got older, the proportion who got alcohol from mom and dad rose -- from 15 percent to 57 percent. The proportion...click here to continue reading