Iceland has largely kicked teen drinking. What can it teach other countries?

In the late 1980s, when Björgvin Ívar Guðbrandsson was a teenager, alcohol and school dances went hand-in-hand. While he was later to drinking than his peers – more interested in playing soccer and guitar – when he did start around age 16, he would smuggle alcohol in his guitar case into school events.

“I think the adults just turned a blind eye,” says Mr. Guðbrandsson. “The culture was, I think, ‘they’re just kids. As long as they aren’t fighting, it’s okay.’”

Today, as a teacher at Langholt school in Reykjavik where he once studied, he says that if a student were to show up drunk to a dance, it would  be such a scandal that the school principal would likely call child protective services.

In reality, that rarely happens because substance abuse on a wide scale has essentially become a “non-issue,” says Guðbrandsson. Alcohol and school dances, in other words, don’t go together in Iceland today. 

This school is hardly alone. Teen drinking – as well as teen smoking, marijuana use, and abuse of other drugs – has plummeted

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