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Volume 27, Issue 3, August 26, 2004 WORLD NEWS |
Young Germans and Their Vices The traditional German pastimes of boozing and smoking are no longer just the preserve of the working man. Instead they have become the pleasure of an alarming percentage of the nation's youth. When it comes to alcohol and tobacco consumption, Germany is ailing. With 16.7 million smokers and 1.6 million alcoholics, smoking and drinking have become so embedded in the fabric of society that it is hard to conceive of how younger generations can avoid falling prey to their addictive clutch. Truth is, tens of thousands cannot. The staggering climb in both alcohol and tobacco use amongst youth groups was overlooked for too long, and although there are now some measures in place to both correct the damage already done and to prevent its continuation, there is a long way to go in protecting children from these essentially adult vices. But the country is a smokers' paradise, with cheap cigarettes which kids can buy from machines on street corners and very few restrictions as to where it is or is not acceptable to light up. In fact, the state of Berlin broke new ground this year in implementing a ban on smoking in its schools. It's a move which other states are likely to follow, but for the time being children over the age of 16 can smoke in designated areas on school premises provided they present a letter of consent from their parents. Complex issuesThe biggest question is, if smoking is no more socially acceptable now than it was ten years ago -- which it is not -- why the massive rise? Marita Völker-Albert, Press Officer for the Federal Centre for Health Education (BzGA) said the reasons are manifold. "It's different for boys and girls. Boys see it as a way of being cool, it makes them feel older and more masculine, whereas girls tend to succumb to peer-pressure and use smoking as a way of staying thin," Völker-Albert told DW-WORLD. Jörg Richert, Managing Director of KARUNA, an organization which helps children and young people with potential or existing addiction problems, believes there are more critical factors at play. "Social pressures created by the continual drop in living standards in Germany lead to children and young adults not receiving the attention they need. When kids feel their parents are neglecting them, they try to get their attention by taking up smoking or drinking," Richert told DW-WORLD. But he also cites another important issue as the desire of children to grow up against the backdrop of adults trying to stay young. "It is much more difficult for kids to become adults because we wear the same clothes as them, we listen to the same music, go to the same concerts - in short, we steal their identity," Richert said. So much for the reasons behind the trend, but what of the solutions? Völker-Albert believes it is crucial to get the young smokers and drinkers to discuss the potential dangers of what they are doing to their bodies. "Until they start talking to each other, there can be no critical reflection," she said. Amongst others, the BzGa already runs a campaign of sending young people to educate their contemporaries on Germany's beaches. Nipping danger in the budRichert welcomes such measures. As far as he is concerned, the only real way to the heart of the matter is to intervene in a preventative role at a very early stage, not least because of the snowball effect of early tobacco addiction. "We now know that people who start smoking at an early age are much more likely to move on to alcohol or other addictive substances," Richert said. And therein lies another problem. Although the consumption of wine and beer among youth groups has tailed off over the past years, the emergence of alcopops has had a truly explosive impact on child and youth drinking habits. Statistics from the BzGA show that in 2003 almost 50 percent of young people between the ages of 14-17 were drinking alcopops at least once a month -- six times more than in 1998. "Alcopops even appeal to very young teenagers. Girls used to go out and drink coke, now they drink alcopops instead, but they don't notice the alcohol. Young people don't actually like alcohol, but they are seduced into liking it," Völker-Albert said. The crux of the matterLast month the government introduced sweeping legislation to put up the tax on these liquor-laced, sickly sweet sodas, increasing the price of a bottle by around € 0.80 ($0.96), but whether it will actually have the desired effect remains to be seen. "The fact that the prices have gone up won't change anything, except that I won't buy it myself, I'll let other people buy them for me," 16-year-old Marietta told DW-WORLD. But the alcohol issue does not stand and fall with alcoholic soda. Although he welcomes the price hike, Jörg Richert believes the whole issue detracts from the real and much more existential core of the problem, which he sees as inextricably linked to declining social standards in Germany, "The discussion surrounding alcopops is a distraction. Politicians should be looking at the employment market. From January onwards, there will be 500,000 more children living from welfare benefit and the consequence will be the exorbitant increase in drug use," he said. t's a sombre prediction, but Richert claims there is an undeniable connection between poverty and drinking, smoking and drugs. And if he is right, the Federal Centre for Health Education is going to have its work cut out in making young people communicate in much louder and clearer voices. Anti-AIDS Groups Face New Challenges German anti-AIDS campaigners cite the increase in new infections among younger Germans as a disturbing new development and criticize the government's health-care reforms. One week ahead of a national AIDS prevention conference in Berlin, German health minister Ulla Schmidt presented a mixed picture regarding the spread of AIDS in Germany. Speaking at a press conference, she said that as in previous years, overall AIDS-related statistics remained stable last year, with about 43 thousand AIDS patients, around 600 AIDS deaths and a rate of about 2000 new infections. Yet in spite of the fact that these statistics haven't changed much over the past two decades, Schmidt also said the latest figures gave cause for concern. "There are worrying signs in the statistics indicating that prevention among young people below 30 years of age is diminishing," she explained. "The use of condoms in risky situations is dramatically lower than in previous years and there is a widening gap in the knowledge about AIDS." She also referred to a particular lack of understanding of AIDS among people from immigrant backgrounds. Raising consciousnessBernhard Bieniek is spokesman of a national advisory panel, created at the outset of the AIDS pandemic in the 1980s, which coordinates national efforts at grass-roots and government levels. He agrees with Schmidt's assessment. "Young people especially have the impression that it's not their problem anymore," he told Deutsche Welle. "Very often they don't know anybody who has HIV and they have never seen anyone who was sick and died of the disease. So we have to find young people who are willing to get involved and find new ways to communicate." He points out that in the past two decades, Germany has been able to keep the spread of AIDS in check because the rate of new infections has remained largely stable and stresses that the country's success in the fight against AIDS was primarily due to political courage and a strong anti-discriminatory approach. "We were lucky with the government we had in the 1980s ñ a conservative government ñ which had the courage to work with gay movements and find ways to make people at risk understand," he says, adding that "in Catholic countries such as Spain and Italy HIV infection is still increasing and that is partly due to the ignorance of politics." An unbearable burdenMeanwhile, Germany's premier aid organization for HIV/AIDS patients says the government's health care reforms have created an extra, sometimes unbearable, burden for those infected with the virus. As its annual conference got underway on Thursday, Deutsche Aidshilfe, an umbrella group of around 130 local German HIV/AIDS groups, said the government's health-care reforms forced more and more infected people into poverty. According to Rainer Jarchow, managing board member with Deutsche Aidshilfe, the changes were carried through at the expense of the chronically sick, handicapped and poor. Although public health funds still pay for the costs of AIDS therapy, including some prescription drugs, since the reforms were implemented in January the funds don't cover over-the-counter drugs anymore. Yet, this medication is necessary to ease the side effects of combination therapy, which causes aches and pains, nausea, diarrhea and vomiting, Jarchow said. "Those who only receive welfare benefits or a small pension are frequently unable to cover the costs of medication," Jarchow said.
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