About Italy (source
Uso e abuso di alcol)
What estimated proportion of the adult population drinks?
Data are referred to people older than 11, so not just adults. The statistic says that in this age interval the 63.9% of the population has drink alcohol at least once during the previous year. People that drink some alcohol every day it's the 22.7% and the 41.2% just occasionally. The report it's not very clear, but I think that the other drink alcohol rarely.
Among them the 51.6% drink wine, the 45.3% beer and the 39.9% also super-alcoholics\liquors.
Is it socially acceptable to drink, and if so, how much?
It's acceptable to drink a glass of wine during a lunch\dinner (during some festivity or in a restaurant, not during working days), or to drink one\two drinks when you go out in the evening. It's not acceptable to be completely drunk. In general we are not used to go out just for drinking.
Is a bottle of wine or liquor a gift you would give to most anyone and assume that that's OK?
Here it's quite normal, when you are invited at someone home for dinner, to arrive with a bottle of wine as a gift. Then usually we drink it all together in the same dinner. We can also arrive with a cake or something else, it's just because it's considered strange and not particular polite to arrive in someone else home for a dinner without bringing nothing.
If you mean something like a Christmas present, it would seem quite strange. It's acceptable if the person you are giving the gift loves this kind of stuff, or what are you giving it's something particular, like a wine that it's made just in a specific place (or also if it is the wine you made. In Italy it's not so difficult to find someone that produces wine).
What social problems if any are associated with drinking and how bad are they?
Alcoholism it's not so diffused, and it's quite difficult to find drunk people during the day. During the evening it's becoming more frequent to see people that drink a lot of cocktail, drinks and so on and that at the end are drunk, but it's not seen as a normal thing.
What are your alcohol and drinking laws and how strictly are they enforced?
As usual our laws are not clear at all.
Normative sull'alcol
A new law says that you can't serve alcohol to people younger than 18. An older law says that you can't sell alcohol to people younger than 16. This cause a paradox: a guy older than 16 but younger than 18 can't be served alcohol in a local but can buy it everywhere else. So it's quite frequent to see teens buying beer in a supermarket and bringing it with them for all the evening.
From the same "not-so-clear-law" it's said that in a disco you can't serve alcohol after 2AM.
About driving, people younger than 21 shouldn't drink at all, for older people the limit it's 0.5 g/l.
When do young people typically start drinking (with and without parental permission)?
Usually your parents make you try some wine or beer for the first time between 10 and 15 years old (once was a lot before, because wine was not considered dangerous). Usually the first try given by the relatives it's merely symbolic, less than 1 inch in the glass. Usually people start to drink more seriously after 15 (usually).
That's in general, then there are people that drink a lot less and a lot more. For example I don't drink alcohol at all.
About the "religious aspect", we don't see any religious problem about alcohol. Red wine it's also used to represent Christ's blood during the Eucharistic Liturgy.