KEY POINTS:
Among the voices embedded in the human psyche is the one which tells us with satisfaction that "I'm different" and another which proclaims confidently, "It can't happen to me".
These inner voices are at their most insistent when we are in our teens and early 20s and, after that, as we experience misfortune either to ourselves or to someone close, the voice adapts its message to something like: "I'm different, and it won't happen to me if I'm careful."
As Anzac Day approaches, we might remember that it was young men listening to those inner voices who 90-odd and 50-odd years ago, in their thousands flocked to volunteer to go to war.
These days those human traits help to explain why some young people indulge in binge drinking; inject, imbibe or inhale illegal drugs; drive cars fast and dangerously; and indulge in all sorts of other behaviour that puts themselves and/or others at risk.
They also help to explain why all the admonishments, all the advice, all the advertising, no matter how graphic and shocking, are not going to make a blind bit of difference.
But just how bad are these problems? In a society seemingly besotted with the sensational, the salacious and the sordid, and one in which we always seem to have to have a bogeyman to worry about, I wonder if we don't place far too much emphasis on the "problems" of our youth.
It's almost as if we are being directed towards these so-called problems to divert our attention from things which are vastly more important, such as the vicious spiral in the cost of living.
That's not a conspiracy theory. It is simply a recognition that this is an election year, a time when politicians become even more adept than usual at letting loose great big red herrings.
But back to the seriousness or otherwise of our "youth problems". What we never seem to take into account is that binge drinking, drug-taking, indiscriminate shagging, dangerous driving and other generally undesirable activities are confined to a rather small minority of our children.
So 400-odd drunken young louts and loutesses gatecrash a Saturday-night party on the North Shore, cause damage to property, generate fear in neighbours and hurl abuse and bottles at police.
Does anyone ever give a thought to the fact that, within a 5km radius of that gatecrashed party, there are probably more than 10 times as many young people who are thoroughly enjoying themselves on a Saturday night without drinking excessively, drugging, bonking, breaking things or throwing bottles at cops?
Similarly, we are encouraged to believe that the education system is riddled with incompetent teachers, and that illiteracy is rampant.
Not for a moment do I underestimate the gravity of those problems, but do we ever consider that they are confined to a tiny minority of teachers, and that hundreds of thousands of children and young people in primary, secondary and tertiary schools are daily taking full advantage of their education and preparing themselves for adulthood?
Young people have from time immemorial pushed society's boundaries to their limits and often beyond.
The difference today is that we have dismantled most of the boundaries set up by societies over the centuries and have made it much easier for young people to trample over those few that are left.
Almost exactly nine years ago, for instance, a National government facing annihilation in an election year took aim at the youth vote and lowered the legal drinking age from 20 to 18, in spite of huge public opposition.
At the time I wrote: "It must be stunningly obvious to even the most mentally challenged among us that if you make something more readily available, more people will take advantage of it."
And so they have. But at the same time it pays to remember that hundreds of thousands of our teenagers never touch alcohol, or use it sparingly in the manner for which it was invented - as a mild tranquilliser and social lubricant.
Furthermore, like tobacco, alcohol is a legal substance, and it has been made more readily available in recent years than it has ever been.
It has always caused me wry amusement that while stop-smoking campaigns have cost millions of man-hours and multi-millions of dollars, drinking campaigns never mention stopping, just being more sensible.
Yet alcohol probably causes 10 times more deaths every year than smoking ever does. As a world-renowned medical man once observed: "If alcohol were invented tomorrow, it would be available only on prescription and then only from a specialist physician."
Now there's an idea.
