Could be. But it could also be that families which are, genetically or culturally, less prone to overboozing treat it as less of a taboo.
As I said upthread, my father was an alcoholic and my family didn’t treat it as a taboo. I don’t know that there is any real evidence to be gleaned from a thread like this.
I remember being given a sip of wine at Christmas when I was like, five, but there wasn’t really any alcohol at home otherwise. Not until after Dad had his heart attack a decade later and started keeping vodka around because he’d heard one drink after dinner would be good for his health. Apple juice with a shot was his drink of choice. I did sneak a bit of his vodka a couple of times.
My sister’s family, that’s a different story. Dad went to San Francisco for a week on business and took Mom with him; they didn’t trust me at home alone yet so I spent the week with my sister and her husband. They kept a bucket of margarita mix in their freezer and the three of us had some every night.
It’s odd, but I don’t actually remember my folks addressing the issue. They almost never drank alcohol themselves, aside from a very occasional glass of wine at a holiday dinner, or a glass of champagne punch on New Year’s Eve. I never was involved with friends that drank while I still lived with my folks, so I never “snuck” a drink.
It was pretty much the same for smoking. I smoked my first and only cigarette when I was in Army Basic Training. Never again, my mouth tasted bad for a whole day.
My mom told me she’d rather I didn’t drink, but she wasn’t going to stop me … at 15 … just the one rule about no drinking and driving (this was ten years before MADD came about) … I was pretty good about not coming home too sloppy drunk and always past the acid peak, and I had the GPA, as her youngest by quite a bit she just didn’t want to parent anymore …
The worse trouble I got into was knowing more about chemistry than the chemistry teacher did …
I was largely ignored as a kid/teen, and did my best to keep it that way. They didn’t care if I drank and knew I only really had a taste for beer, other drugs would have gotten their attention but I wasn’t interested anyway. They were religious enough I guess but when I finally said I wasn’t going to church anymore (age 12ish) they didn’t push it. They were from lower middle class homes, gave me a little bump up from what they came from.