Scandal: Harry Potter drinks

In many scenes in «Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince», the famous apprentice wizard with the bifocals and his friends, still adolescents, are seen drinking what may be alcohol. This has of course created an uproar in the United States, where the minimum drinking age is 21.

Tara Parker-Pope, health columnist for the prestigious New York Times and mother of a 10-year-old fan of the series, is heading up the furor. The journalist perceives bad habits among the 16-year-old pupils at Hogwarts: «Hermione is tipsy. Neville is serving drinks. Ron is sipping mead and Harry is partying with his professors. (...) sipping, gulping and pouring various forms of alcohol to calm their nerves, fortify their courage or comfort their sorrows.»

To support her argument, Parker-Pope makes the point that minors watching movies in which the characters consume alcohol have a good chance of drinking earlier. She goes on to cite a 2007 study of 5,600 young Germans that showed adolescents used to watching movies in which the heroes drink are three times more likely to do the same than teenagers who don¹t see those films.

The scandal contradicts the a recent statement by the Vatican, in which it sang the praises of the new Harry Potter movie after previously calling JK Rowling¹s books «the devil's work».