The new campaign draws attention to the risks of serving alcohol and non-alcoholic beers to children

The new Nechmel děti campaign draws attention to the risks of serving alcohol and non-alcoholic beers to children. In the Czech Republic, parents are often among the first people from whom a child receives alcohol, said campaign leader Petr Freimann.

The project is backed by the team organizing the Dry February campaign, which aims to motivate adults to reduce alcohol consumption. In connection with the current campaign, Freimann referred to a survey initiated by the team, according to which every fourth child had a glass of alcohol for the first time in the presence of their parents. On Tuesday, the organizers in Prague presented the Nechmel děti campaign and launched an educational website.

“We are based on the Suchej February campaign, which has been drawing attention to the issue of high and risky alcohol consumption in the Czech Republic for ten years. And other topics open up. “One of those topics concerns the relationship between alcohol and children, hence the triangle of parents, children and alcohol,” Freimann said. According to him, the new campaign should point out how problematic many parents approach the administration of alcohol to their children. “And that they are often the first people we consume alcohol,” he said.

Freimann said that one in four children received alcohol from their parents for the first time and that 38 percent of parents offered alcohol to their child before he was 15, as key findings from an online survey conducted in February this year. “We did the survey on a sample for three to 15 years,” the organizer noted.

“The important accent we have there is associated with so-called beermixes – these are flavored beers, soft beers, radlers, etc. There, it’s important to say that 36 percent of children drink these drinks, according to their parents,” Freimann said. He noted that experts rate this as very risky behavior for future alcohol consumption.

“There is a taste habit, a cultural habit. And it is also risky for the child’s body, because even though it is as if it is non-alcoholic, there is often alcohol and it is a problem for a small body,” Freimann added. This was later emphasized in a press release by Petr Popov, Head of the Department of Addictology, 1st Faculty of Medicine, Charles University and General University Hospital in Prague.

Popov said that half the alcohol content of a drink is similar for a small child’s body, as if an adult had a normal beer. “Besides, children get used to the bitter taste of hops. It is a realistic assumption that they will look for it all the more at an older age,” the doctor said. 3775 respondents took part in the survey, including a thousand parents of children from three to 15 years of age.

Regarding the design of the campaign, Freimann said that in addition to launching the website, a small outdoor campaign with thematic panels is planned, and in the future probably other awareness-raising events resulting from cooperation with partners. These are the Professional Society for Risk Behavior, the Ministry of Education, the Association of Non-Governmental Organizations and the Department of Addictology, 1st Faculty of Medicine, Charles University.

“It’s crucial to open that topic and say that just as Suchej February is adult education, so Don’t Want Kids is something like enlightenment to children and that there is a problem here,” Freimann said.

According to Freimann, almost 14 percent of Czech adults have declared their participation in the Suchej February event, when people are holding a month without alcohol, about three percent more year-on-year. “So we are somewhere around 900,000 adults who have joined the campaign,” the organizer concluded.