Interesting Facts

According to research into adolescent health, published in the Lancet, our brains are not fully developed until the age of 24. (In the UK, young people can legally smoke and have sex at 16, drive at 17, drink alcohol, vote and are deemed adults at 18, but the brain is ill-equipped before the age of 24 to deal with the effects of all the drinking they do and less able to assess risk. I wish I had known this when I was a bit younger. I'd have had a good excuse for all the crazy things I did: "Hey, give me a break, my brain isn't fully developed yet.")

According to a series of reports on adolescent health behaviour, published in the Lancet, British teenagers are among the worst in the world when it comes to drinking. (One in five adolescents was found to binge drink on a weekly basis in the same high-income countries. England ranked fourth out of 40 high-income countries for the number of 13-year-olds who had been drunk. Wales came fifth and Scotland was eighth. Having lived in Scotland at the age of 21, I'm amazed they were only eighth.)