A poster on the wall of a pediatrician's examining room is jolting.

"Kids used to drink behind their parents' back," the poster notes in bold lettering. "Now it's their parents who are doing the pouring."

A photo above the text depicts three teens openly consuming alcohol while a couple, apparently a father and mother, are in the background engaged in household pursuits.

Published by the American Medical Association in partnership with The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the poster publicizes the startling results of two nationwide polls published last August. As detailed on the Web site www.AlcoholPolicyMD.com, the polls showed among other things:

• Nearly 25 percent of youth aged 13-18 — and about 33 percent of girls aged 16-18 — said their own parents have supplied them with alcohol. Those who said so reported, on the average, that parents were their suppliers three times during the previous six months.

• Even more disturbing, 25 percent of parents surveyed said that under their supervision, they had allowed their teenage children to drink in the previous six months. About 8 percent said they had allowed friends of their teens to drink during that six-month period.

Apart from the legal and moral violation involved, it is foolish indeed to allow youth to drink alcohol. Alcohol consumption is a leading cause of death among young people when auto accidents and fatal injuries are taken into account, this according to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism.

Moreover, alcohol consumption damages young people's brains, which are still developing beyond age 20. An experiment publicized on the above Web site compared teenagers who drink alcohol with those who don't. Though they hadn't had a drink in several weeks, the alcohol-consuming teens had about a 10 percent lower retention rate for verbal and non-verbal information. That amounts to one whole grade in school, the difference between an A and a B, or between passing and failing.

The information provided does not report parents' reasons for giving alcohol to their youth, but it is not difficult to conceive that their rationalization might be that the youth will find a way to drink alcohol anyway, so they are merely providing a controlled environment where their children can do so without injuring themselves and others.

Of course, such reasoning is naive at best. For many, the teenage years are a time for pushing boundaries and challenging authority. If young people have no qualms about violating the law regarding underage drinking — albeit with parental consent — it is likely they will see nothing wrong with getting alcohol behind their parents' back, especially if they have gotten the implicit message that underage drinking is OK.

Present-day attitudes about alcohol consumption among the young are just one vindication of the revelation given by the Lord in 1833 and known to us today as the Word of Wisdom (see Doctrine and Covenants Section 89).

The revelation was given "in consequence of evils and designs which do and will exist in the hearts of conspiring men in the last days" (verse 4). The pervasiveness of advertising for alcoholic beverages and the glamorization of them in entertainment media lead to the conclusion that for young and old, the Lord's policy is the best policy on alcohol: absolute abstinence.

Paul prophesied that those who live in our day would be, among other things, "disobedient to parents" (2 Timothy 3:2). That some parents would find it justifiable to compromise values and ethics on the theory that their children are going to disobey them in any case is symptomatic of the "perilous times" Paul warned about (see verse 1).

As the covenant people of God, we are under commandment to gather Israel by bringing as many people as we can to Christ. This entails, insofar as possible, being affable, kind and inclusive to all within our realm of experience. At the same time, we are under covenantal obligation to keep ourselves pure as befitting "the salt of the earth" and "a city set on an hill" (see Matthew 5:13-14).

As pertaining to safeguarding our own children, perhaps this includes making our homes an inviting and attractive environment where they can bring their friends, especially if we are uncertain or uneasy about the quality of adult supervision that may be elsewhere. President Gordon B. Hinckley advocated this when he said at October 2000 General Conference: "Open your homes to the friends of your children. If you find they have big appetites, close your eyes and let them eat. Make your children's friends your friends."

If any message is clear from the AMA poll, it is that this is a day for redoubled vigilance, not a relaxation of standards.