article_snippet: A study has found that those who had sipped alcohol by the age of 11 were five times more likely to have had a full drink within a couple of years, and four times more likely to have binged or been drunk than peers who had not tasted alcohol at an early age.
article_snippet: At the beginning of sixth grade – around the age of 11 – almost 30 per cent of pupils said they had sipped alcohol.
article_snippet: ‘sippers’ said they had had a full alcoholic drink, compared with 6 per cent of those who had not.
article_snippet: Almost one in ten of early sippers had got drunk or binged – compared with just under 2 per cent of ‘non-sippers’, says a report in the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs.