Teens Drinking, and Town Hall Meetings

SAMHSA sponsored Town Hall meetings take place across the country next week, and if your community is sponsoring one, please attend.

SAMHSA says: Underage drinking continues to be a leading public health problem in the United States. Alcohol use threatens the safe and healthy development of more young people than any other substance—even more than tobacco and illicit drugs! On an average day in 2006, research shows that 7,970 teens drank alcohol for the first time, a much higher number than begin smoking or trying illicit drugs. Alcohol use among children and adolescents starts early and increases rapidly with age. As part of a national effort to help communities in their efforts to stop underage drinking, a series of Town Hall Meetings (THMs) will take place across America during the week of March 22, 2010. This nationwide effort will support efforts to meet goals from The Surgeon General’s Call to Action To Prevent and Reduce Underage Drinking (PDF) and is supported by the Federal Interagency Coordinating Committee on the Prevention of Underage Drinking (ICCPUD).”  Click for more information about SAMHSA sponsored Town Hall Meetings

Parents, your education about alcohol use among teenagers is a key component to you keeping your teen safe.  I was involved in a discussion just last evening about risky behavior with my online parent discussion group. One woman, who has two kids in college and two still in high school, seemed to have successfully gotten the “no alcohol allowed” message through to her older teens and I asked her how she had been so successful in doing that. She said “The best thing we did was to become educated.” Education FOR PARENTS!! is key.

Did you know:

• in any month, more young people are drinking than are smoking cigarettes or marijuana,
• adolescents drink less frequently than adults, but consume more per occasion,
• binge drinking is often the way kids drink… on average young people have 5 drinks on a single occasion. Binge drinking is a highly dangerous practice,
• alcohol dependence rates are highest among the ages of 18 – 20,
• a teen needs more alcohol than ad adult to feel the effect of it, but in actuality teens’ judgment is impaired with less alcohol than an adult.
• alcohol kills more kids than all illegal drugs combined.

It is NOT inevitable that teenagers will drink. And, for most kids, the single most powerful deterrent is parents. Your actions matter.

The Town Hall Meetings provide an informative open forum for discussion; you will gain information from local experts, and you will have the opportunity to engage in discussion about this important topic with your neighbors and peers.

Listen, learn, tune in about this important topic. And if you happen to live in my hometown of Acton, MA, our meeting is sponsored by CAFY and will take place on March 24 from 7 t0 9 at the Acton Town Hall.

Interesting Link:  Would You Let Teens Drink in Your House?