Liquor Angel is right.  Parents need to teach their kids how to behave responsibly and pay more attention to what their kids are doing.

The crowd over at CASA wants you to believe that underage drinking is at its absolute worst in years.  Here’s one of the things they’ve had to say:

“Beer and other alcohol is the number one drug of abuse for American children and teens.  Rates of teen drinking remain at epidemic proportions with underage drinkers annually downing 19.7 percent of all the alcohol consumed in the U.S.”  (Joe Califano, CASA, Sept. 10, 2003)

This sounds harsh, doesn’t it?  If CASA is your source for information on underage drinking, then of course the situation looks grim.

Now, we can all agree that in the U.S. there is too much underage drinking, but let’s consider what some other sources are showing us.

“Monitoring the Future,” an ongoing study of the behaviors, attitudes, and values of American secondary school students, college students, and young adults has shown that current drinking is down among 8th graders, 10th graders and 12th graders.  In fact 8th grade current drinking is at the lowest level since 1991, when it began to be tracked (down 32%), 10th grade is at the lowest level since 1991 (down 22%), and 12th grade current drinking is at the lowest level since 1975, when it began to be tracked (down 6% since 2000 and down 41% since 1982).

And while we’re spouting out facts, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, in 2004, teenage alcohol-related traffic fatalities were down 13% since 2000 and down 62% since 1982.

Another government agency, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), has found that 82% of adolescents ages 12-17 do not drink and 71% of underage youth, ages 12-20 do not drink.

As we’ve said before, any underage drinking is too much and we want parents to help us keep alcohol out of the hands of their kids. The white coats at the National Academy of Sciences said as much in their 2003 report on the problem: “…[U]nderage drinking cannot be successfully addressed by focusing on youth alone….[Youth] usually obtain alcohol—either directly or indirectly—from adults. Efforts to reduce underage drinking, therefore, need to focus on adults and must engage the society at large.”

Obviously, we don’t want anyone under the age of 21 purchasing our products.  We do, however, want to make sure that everyone gets their facts straight so we can know how to fix the problem. 

Underage drinking is on the decline, not as rapidly as we all want, but if we don’t have an accurate understanding of where we are and where we’ve been, it makes it doubly hard to figure out what to do next. 

Let me end today’s epistle with a question.  Susan, where are you?  The Susan we’re searching for is Susan Foster, referred to in our inaugural posting.  Susan is a wheel over at CASA and she has her name on lots of these outrageously wrong “facts” about underage drinking.

We haven’t had a retort from Susan (or anyone else at CASA) defending her position and her “facts.”  Come on Susan, we are all waiting…and hopeful!

Cheers!

guy