Holidays, teenage parties and music festivals: Simple things parents can do to keep their child as safe as possible
None of what I'm going to talk about today is new - I've raised almost all of these issues many times before - but leading into the holidays it is important for parents to remember that this is a dangerous time. Every year we lose a number of our young people around the Christmas/New Year break due to alcohol and other drugs and almost all of them are completely preventable. We see a spike in alcohol-related drownings and alcohol poisonings, young people dying in car crashes where alcohol is involved increases and, of course, there is the inevitable rise in drug overdoses and, in some cases, deaths, increasingly linked to the use of ecstasy and other illicits at music festivals. It's hard to forget that we had six ecstasy-related deaths at music festivals over last year's holiday period ... Our teens have just finished the school year and are keen to party, the weather is perfect and there is an expectation in this country that whatever we do, we need to do it in a