By: Felix Marwick | Tuesday, August 28, 2012 6:20 AM

If some people are to be believed the youth of today are basket cases when it comes to their use of alcohol.

Images of drunk young people have been liberally plastered over TV screens and newspapers over the past couple of years as legislation reforming our liquor laws have been before our politicians for consideration.

Depending on who you listen to, young people are binge drinking, socially irresponsible, public vomiters with tendencies to be vulnerable to assault, STDs, and other assorted social nasties.

Doom, gloom, despair and despondency have been the order of the day.

While it's true to say we're not great when it comes to our drinking habits when young I think things aren't always as black as they're painted.

My generation was as bad, if not worse, when comes to youth drinking.

I started drinking at a time when drink driving was the norm. Every weekend we'd pile into a mate's car head to find a party, drink 'til we were sick, then we'd drive home. The very thought of having a sober driver barely crossed our minds.

That's one behaviour that's now no longer socially acceptable.

And our binge drinking was just as bad, if not worse, than those of young people today.

Sure, we might not have had access to RTD's or alcopops, but we still managed to get our hands on wine, beer, and hard spirits when we wanted to and we didn't drink them responsibly either.

23 years on and I still can't drink rum, thanks to a drinking incident that happened when I was just 16.

And the drunken slurred comment I once heard from a friend while binge drinking on a beach still resonates to this day.

The phrase "oh no, forest fire" will live with me for a long time. Shotgunning beer and using fireworks never ends well.

What I'm trying to say is that when it comes to considering the way we sell and use alcohol it's naive and wrong to single out any individual section of our society as being worse behaved than others.

Kiwi's have always had a tendency to be problem drinkers, and we probably always will.

The questions is, will law change drive culture change. Human nature being the way it is my guess is probably not.

And for the record, I don't drink much any more. About 10 years ago I came to the conclusion I'd drunk my share and would wait for the rest of the world to catch up. The funny thing is most of the people I binge drank with in my youth pretty much did the same.

Sometimes it's strange how things work out .