1200 word argument essay

Chapter 5: Preventing Teenage Drinking

On August 2, 2011, in Topeka, Kansas, local government and law enforcement officials as well as representatives of private organizations held a Remembering Last Night initiative to curb teenage drinking. The effort was aimed at making teens aware of the “Remembering Last Night” Facebook page created by Hannah Helmke and Elijah Kampsen, eighteen-year-old recent graduates of Shawnee Heights [Kansas] High School. Kampsen said Facebook is a great way to reach teens with messages about dangers associated with drinking: “It's important to use social media to get in contact with youth.”79 The site allows teenagers to share information about drinking experiences and receive advice or help from other teens if drinking becomes a problem.

Topeka police chief Ron Miller said, “The emphasis [of such programs] has to be on prevention. It takes the entire community to prevent underage drinking. The community has got to get serious about preventing underage drinking.”80 Miller's comment echoed the African proverb “It takes a village to raise a child.” In 1996, when Hillary Rodham Clinton was the nation's First Lady, she used that phrase for the title of her book It Takes a Village: And Other Lessons Children Teach Us. In the book, Clinton argued that everyone in a community should become involved in educating children.

The effort to curb teenage drinking and safeguard young people against the dangers of using alcohol also requires the effort of everyone in the community. That fight against underage drinking is being waged across the nation by government agencies, private groups, and even teens themselves.

GOVERNMENT PROGRAMS

Since underage drinking is both a legal and a public health issue, it is a concern for federal, state, and local government agencies. There are many federal government programs aimed at stopping teenage drinking. The scope of these programs is evident at Stop Underage Drinking (www.stopalcoholabuse.gov ), the federal government's Internet gateway to information on underage drinking. The site has information about and links to programs that fifteen different federal agencies operate to combat teen drinking; even the Department of Defense fights underage drinking because alcohol can become a problem for

The Students Against Destructive Decisions (SADD) stages a scene of mourners and a coffin with a mirror in it to make a dramatic point about the consequences of driving while intoxicated.

young soldiers. State and local government agencies, especially school districts, are also working hard to curb teenage drinking. In Nebraska, Governor Dave Heineman declared April 21, 2011, the state's first annual PowerTalk 21 Day. Heineman encouraged parents to talk to their children about the problems associated with underage drinking because “what we say and do makes a big difference to our children.”81

In addition to government programs, private organizations like Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) and Students Against Destructive Decisions (SADD) fight underage drinking. Most of their efforts are aimed at educating teenagers and the general public about the many effects alcohol has on teenagers. Government agencies, individuals, and groups involved in this fight use a wide variety of methods to accomplish that goal.

UNDERAGE DRINKING EDUCATION

It is easier than ever today to learn about underage drinking. A wealth of information is available on the subject in every medium possible, from books and pamphlets to videos and Internet sites. The Internet is one of the best sources about teenage drinking because it allows easy access to information from around the world. Sites have medical facts on the effects alcohol has on teens and ways parents can help teens cope with alcohol-related problems. There are also sites in which teenagers can discuss alcohol use with other teens or read what others have written about their experiences with alcohol. Schools teach students about the dangers of alcohol in classes and hold assemblies on the subject. Schools also try to give parents tips on how to talk to their children about alcohol and deal with them if they start drinking. In addition to such ordinary educational activities, many efforts to educate teens use creative means to help them understand the realities and dangers of underage drinking.

High school prom night is one of the most dangerous of the year for teenagers, who often combine drinking with the big social event. On March 25, 2011, the day before the prom at Alexandria High School in Anniston, Alabama, Calhoun County deputies staged a mock fatal accident at the school, complete with a smashed-up auto, empty beer cans, and two victims who were

taken away by ambulance. The event was organized by the school's SADD affiliate to show students what can happen if they drink and drive. Sophomore Carly Edwards said the dramatization was an eye-opener for her: “It's scary. I'm sure this will send a message to some people who don't think about the consequences.”82

Imbler High School senior Kiley Dewey won a statewide award in Oregon for fighting drunk driving for the one-day Living Dead program she organized at her school on October 20, 2008. In the United States a teenager dies on average every fifteen minutes in a drunk driving accident. Over a three-hour period, Imbler High School students who were chosen to become those victims donned white makeup and hooded cloaks. When they went to classes in costume, they reminded other students about how many teens die in such accidents.

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IT CAN HAPPEN TO ANYONE

“People think, ‘It's not going to happen to me’ or ‘I'll never drink that much again.’ They do not seem to associate their own heavy drinking with negative consequences.”—Kevin King, coauthor of a study on why some college students continue to drink despite problems associated with their alcohol use

Quoted in Molly McElroy. “Rose-Colored Beer Goggles: Social Benefits of Heavy Drinking Outweigh Harms.” UW Today, July 5, 2011. www.washington.edu/news/articles/rose-colored-beer-goggles-social-benefits-of-heavy-drinking-outweigh-harms .

For many young people, drinking either starts or escalates when they go to college. When drinking at off-campus housing at the University of Wisconsin–Platteville became a problem because of loud parties and vandalism by drunken students, the SAFE (Safe Actions for Everyone) Grant County Coalition decided to act. In 2010 it started the Fresh Start program, which educated students about their out-of-control behavior instead of punishing them. Fresh Start allowed students to avoid being ticketed or fined for underage drinking by taking a course that taught them about the dangers associated with underage drinking. Kathy A. Marty, the group's director, said, “We want

One SADD alcohol-prevention technique has been to use virtual reality to simulate the effects of alcohol during a mock sobriety test.

to educate, too, not just penalize.”83 The group encouraged students to host nonalcoholic parties by awarding a cash prize to the best party each year.

In East Hartford, Connecticut, ERASE (East of the River Action for Substance Abuse Elimination) attacks problems like teen drinking by teaching young people how to develop media campaigns to fight them. Students also study existing policies in schools and their community about such subjects. Executive

Director Bonnie W. Smith said it is important that teens are involved in such programs because “evidence shows that a peer-to-peer message is far more powerful than someone speaking at someone else. When young people send the message not to drink, it's very powerful.”84

Although general education and innovative programs have helped curb teenage drinking, they have failed to stop it entirely. Teens that do drink, however, as well as adults who provide them with alcohol, risk being arrested and put in jail because of strict enforcement of underage drinking laws.

TEEN DRINKING IS ILLEGAL

Few teenagers who drink ever stop to think that they could be arrested for doing so. However, it happens every day to hundreds of teens. On July 29, 2011, police in South Kingstown, Rhode Island, arrested two nineteen-year-old men who were camping out because they had more than one hundred dollars' worth of alcoholic beverages and small amounts of marijuana in their tent. The arrest came in a wooded area off a bike path, a spot so secluded the teens had thought they could drink there without being discovered by authorities. Police, however, were alerted by a woman who reported suspicious activity in the area.

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“I SHOULD BE DEAD”

“I should be dead but by the Grace of God I am alive to pray that my kids won't be as stupid as we were [when he and his friends were young].”—Jacked Up Jerry in an online comment on June 7, 2011, to a newspaper story about the dangers teenagers face when they drink and drive

Quoted in Kim Painter. “Summertime Can Be a Breaking Point for Teen Safety.” USA Today, June 17, 2011. http://yourlife.usatoday.com/parenting-family/teen-ya/story/2011/06/Summertime-can-be-a-breaking-point-for-teen-safety/48115904/1 .

Because it is illegal for teenagers to drink or buy alcohol, it is hard for them to obtain alcohol or go to places that serve it. Many teenagers get alcohol from older siblings or friends and

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Parents Should Talk to Their Children

It is often hard for parents to discuss drinking with their children. Parents often have trouble because they do not know what to say about using alcohol, especially if they regularly consume alcoholic beverages themselves. However, psychologists and other experts on the subject of under-age drinking stress that it is important for parents to establish a dialogue with their children on drinking even if they are worried about how to do it. There are many print and online resources that parents can use as a guide to the discussion. At the very least, parents should warn their children about the dangers of drinking. This is what author Emily Listfield recommends parents tell their children: “Ask your kids what kinds of experiences they're having; make your personal values clear, and calmly lay out the risks. Studies have found that parents who combine clear expectations of accountability with support and warmth have more success in curbing binge drinking than either strictly authoritarian or overly indulgent parents.”

Emily Listfield. “Teen Drinking: What Parents Can Do.” Parade, June 12, 2011. www.parade.com/health/2011/06/what-parents-can-do-drinking.html .

The National Center for Injury Prevention and Control operates a program that pledges parents to promote teenage driving safety and teach the pitfalls of alcohol on the highway.

some use fake identification cards. In Taunton, Massachusetts, illegal IDs became such a big problem during the summer of 2011 that police began a crackdown on them. Sergeant Kevin Medas admitted that new computer technology has made it easier for teens to fool bartenders or liquor store clerks with realistic fakes: “They have a way to duplicate it 90 percent.”85 Taunton won a $9,700 grant to increase its surveillance of underage drinking, including sting operations to find outlets that sell alcohol to teens using fake IDs. Medas warned that teens caught with liquor would be fined and arrested on misdemeanor charges of illegal possession.

Teenagers often have parties at home because police in many states are not allowed to enter a private home unless they have knowledge that a crime is being committed. In recent years, however, communities have begun passing laws to make it easier for police to arrest teens at such parties. On August 22, 2011, Bay Head, New Jersey, officials adopted an ordinance that allows police greater power to enter homes and break up underage parties. Bay Head mayor William W. Curtis explained why his city needed a stronger law to police teen drinking: “What concerns me the most is that it seems the drinkers are younger now. We used to get high school–age kids having the parties, but now we've had kids as young as 13 having drinking parties.”86

The hosts of such parties, whether they are teenagers or adults, are committing crimes by providing alcohol to minors. On August 22, 2011, four teenagers were arrested at an overnight party in Merrimack, New Hampshire. Seventeen-year-old Danielle Belletate, who hosted the party, was charged with facilitating an underage drinking party as well as underage drinking.

Sometimes parents provide alcohol for teenagers at parties held in their homes. These parents claim it is safer to have their children and their friends drink in a controlled environment. But Brenda Nelson, a social worker in Barrington High School in Illinois, strongly disagrees with that argument: “I think that that is a myth that if they're drinking in my home then they're safe.”87

Nelson worked to pass a social hosting law in Barrington that allows the city to fine parents who host underage drinking

parties. Barrington was one of many Illinois communities that passed such laws after the 2006 deaths of two eighteen-year-olds. The teens were killed in a car crash after they had been drinking at a party in Deerfield, Illinois, that parents had held for their son and his friends. The deaths led many communities to pass laws to make it easier to prosecute adults who provide alcohol to minors.

The belief that children are safer drinking at home was also proved false on July 27, 2011, when police in Las Cruces, New Mexico, arrested the father and stepmother of a fifteen-year-old boy who died of alcohol poisoning after drinking with them on July 14. They were charged with intentional child abuse resulting in death and negligent child abuse resulting in death. Police said the couple admitted allowing the boy to drink beer, wine, and brandy with them in their home. They even told police that while they were drinking together, the boy bragged about his drinking in text messages to friends.

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ADULTS SERVING MINORS

“We're talking about kids who barely have their driver's licenses, and they're being served alcohol.”—Saginaw, Michigan, police chief Gerald H. Cliff commenting on arrests at a bar that was serving teenagers

Quoted in Tom Gilchrist. “Police Ticket 15 Wednesday Night in Crackdown on Under-age Drinking at Perry's Schuch Hotel.” Saginaw (MI) News, August 18, 2011. www.mlive.com/news/saginaw/index.ssf/2011/08/police_ticket_15_wednesday_nig.html .

One of the most effective ways in which states have fought teenage drinking is to lower the BAC level necessary to find teens guilty of drunk driving. The level of alcohol that is proof of intoxication for adults is 0.08 percent in all fifty states. Because teens are not allowed to drink, every state in the 1990s lowered that level for them to 0.02 percent or lower; some states have levels of 0.01 and a few 0.00, which is true zero tolerance. In 2005 Jeanne Mejeur of the National Conference of State Legislatures wrote that the laws were a factor in a 6 percent decline

nationwide from 1993 to 2003 in incidents involving teen drivers who had been drinking. However, Mejeur noted that “despite the improvement, far too many young drivers are still hitting the road after hitting the bottle. Reducing their access to alcohol is critical in saving lives.”88

The harsh reality of teenage drinking is that some teenagers will drink despite the best efforts of government agencies, private groups, and individuals trying to make them realize how dangerous drinking can be for them. There are several factors that account for continued teenage drinking even though it is illegal and often unsafe.

In the 1990s every state lowered the legal blood alcohol concentration (BAC) for teenagers to at least .02, some to .00. The adult limit is .08.

Various Types of Impairment at Different BAC Levels
Blood Aicohol Concontration (BAC)*	Typical Effects	Rredictable Effects on Driving
* Information in this table shows the BAC level at which the effect usually is first observed, and has been gathered from a variety of sources, including the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, the American Medical Association, the National Commission Against Drunk Driving, and WebMD.
Taken from: http://www.cdc.gov/Motorvehiciesafety/Impaired_Driving/bac.html
.02%	• Some loss of judgment • Relaxation • Slight body warmth • Altered mood	• Decline in visual functions (rapid tracking of a moving target) • Decline in ability to perform two tasks at same time (divided attention)
.05%	• Exaggerated behavior • May have loss of small-muscle control (e.g., focusing his eyes) • Impaired judgment • Usually good feeling • Lowered alertnees • Release of inhibition	• Reduced coordination • Reduced ability to track moving objects • Difficulty steering • Reduced response to emergency driving situations
.08%	• Muscle coordination becomes poor (e.g., balance, speech, vision, reaction times, and hearing) • Harder to detect danger • Judgment, self-control, reasoning, and memory are impaired	• Concentration • Short-term memory loss • Speed control • Reduced information processing capability (e.g., signal detection, visual search) • Impaired percepion
.10%	• Clear deterioration of reaction time and control • Slurred speech, poor coordination, and slowed tinking	• Reduced ability to maintain lane poeition and brake appropriately
.15%	• Far less muscle control than normal • Vomiting may occur (unless this level is reached slowly or a person has developed a tolerance for alcohol) • Major loss of balance	• Substantial impairment in vehicle control, attention to driving task, and in necessary visual and auditory information processing

Various Types of Impairment at Different BAC Levels Taken from: http://www.cdc.gov/Motorvehiclesatety/Impaired_Driving/bac.html.

WHY DO TEENS STILL DRINK?

The 1986 book A Six-Pack and a Fake I.D. by Susan and Daniel Cohen is a serious look at the many problems drinking creates for teenagers. In the book, the husband-and-wife writing team admitted honestly that they had been underage drinkers: “We both drank as teenagers, even though it was illegal to do so just as most other teenagers did then and do now. In school we were shown anti-drinking films [and] we laughed at them and ignored their message.”89

Psychologists at the University of Washington released a study on the reasons college students continue to drink even after experiencing horrendous hangovers, fights, and sexual contact. Researchers concluded that these consequences were not dire enough to stop a teen from drinking.

Like the Cohens, many, if not most, teenagers laugh off warnings about drinking from parents, teachers, the news media, and even other young people. The fact that so many teens reject such advice and set aside factual evidence about the dangers drinking poses to them is frustrating to those who are trying to curb underage drinking. Like many adults, Verdigris police chief Barry Lamb wonders why, with so many examples of the dire consequences of drinking, so many teens fail to appreciate the dangers of drinking: “How often can you say it? How much can you preach it? How many doors do you have to knock on so that we don't have these preventable tragedies like this on our highways?”90

The main reason young people ignore warnings about alcohol is that most have not experienced any of the serious negative consequences of drinking, such as killing someone in an auto accident or becoming an alcoholic. Jeff drank heavily all through his teenage years but says, “I never got into any major trouble as a teen.”91 Jeff admits he was lucky. He was pulled over by police once when he was driving while drunk, but they did not arrest him.

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LESSON NOT LEARNED

“We want to forgive and overlook youthful indiscretions. [But by] not punishing the kids earlier, it becomes more serious as an adult problem.”—Clay Abbott of Texas District and County Attorneys Association explaining why Texas should be harder on teens who drink and drive

Quoted in Diane Jennings, Selwyn Crawford, and Darlean Spangenberger. “As Teens Drink and Drive, Texas Only Talks Tough.” Dallas Morning News, January 2, 2011. www.dallas-news.com/news/crime/headlines/20110102-as-teens-drink-and-drive-texas-only-talks-tough-.ece .

On May 30, 2011, University of Washington (UW) psychologists released a study on why college students continue to drink even after they have experienced negative results such as hangovers, fights, and sexual contact they later realized was

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A Young Alcoholic

People who start drinking when they are teenagers face a greater risk of becoming alcoholics. One of the most effective ways for alcoholics to quit drinking is to go to meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA). Even though most AA members are adults, teenagers are welcome at meetings. Danna F. quit drinking and started attending AA when she was fourteen. Some meetings are solely for teenagers, but Danna felt welcomed by older alcoholics and enjoyed those meetings even more. In 2009, after nearly a decade of sobriety, Danna explained how much the older alcoholics helped her; female members even gave her rides to meetings because she was not old enough to drive. Danna wrote:

My age mattered less than the fact that I identified as an alcoholic. I had a ride home even when it was out of the way or late at night. The women from my home group threw me a surprise high school graduation party and pooled to buy me a wonderful gift. From my first meeting until now, I remain in awe of the genuineness and unconditional love of AA members.

Danna F. “The Young One.” Grapevine, July 2009, p. 53.

Alcoholics Anonymous has meetings for young alcoholics or for both young and old together. AA programs have been found repeatedly to be one of the most effective ways to quit drinking.

inappropriate or even dangerous. Their research included online responses from nearly five hundred students who discussed their drinking. Diane Logan, a UW clinical psychology graduate student, said the study showed that students who had only minor problems from drinking kept using alcohol because they believed the benefits outweighed the risk that something worse might happen. Logan writes, “Until high levels of negative consequences are experienced, participants aren't deterred by the ill effects of drinking.”92 The same pattern of ignoring negative consequences that come from drinking can also lead adults to continue drinking despite problems alcohol causes them, including drunk driving arrests.

Alcohol's ability to entice people to keep drinking despite negative experiences stems from the strong pleasurable effects it gives them. But even though alcohol's hold on many teenagers is strong enough to make them keep drinking despite run-ins with their parents, teachers, and law enforcement officials, the vast array of programs to curb underage drinking are having a positive effect. In June 2011 a survey by SADD and Liberty Mutual Insurance of 2,294 high school students across the nation showed that only 6 percent said they would drive on prom night if they had been drinking. That compared to a 2009 study in which 90 percent of teens indicated they or other teens would be more likely to drink and drive after a prom than any other time of the year. SADD spokesperson Stephen Wallace said: “Underage drinking is never acceptable; however, these findings suggest that when schools enforce zero-tolerance measures at official functions they can be an effective way to curb that dangerous behavior behind the wheel. On the flip side, however, the findings also suggest that when school enforcement is absent, drinking and driving is more prevalent.”93

The encouraging results of the 2011 survey show that efforts to curb teenage drinking are easing the problem even though they will never be able to eliminate it.

Full Text: COPYRIGHT 2012 Gale, Cengage Learning

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Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)

Uschan, Michael V. "Preventing Teenage Drinking." Teens and Alcohol, Lucent Books, 2012, pp. 72-86. Hot Topics. Gale Health and Wellness, https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/CX2572600012/HWRC?u=lincclin_tcc&sid=HWRC&xid=173cb1ed. Accessed 22 Nov. 2019.