MILLINOCKET – Ever since Thomas Maloney graduated from high school, and probably well before then, there has existed in town reality and lore a place teenagers call “the gravel pit.”

It isn’t just a former quarry. It’s a secretive place, and it’s not always in the same location, the most recent incarnation being on a dirt track off Stacyville Road, but it has always been where underage kids go to drink and do drugs.

“It’s been like that since I was a kid,” Maloney, Millinocket’s school board chairman and a graduate of the Millinocket High School Class of 1971, said Thursday. “Even back then, we had a place where kids would go to get drunk. The cops would tell us, ‘If you’re going to go do that, don’t do it in town,’ and so it would always be someplace remote.”

Yet that culture of permissiveness, which often regards drinking as a teenage rite of passage, must be one of the first things eliminated if town youth and adults are to successfully combat underage drinking, speakers at the town’s first Underage Drinking Summit said Thursday.

About 40 educators, elected officials, social service workers, police and teens gathered Thursday night at St. Martin of Tours Catholic Church on Colby Street for the summit, titled “Start Talking Before They Start Drinking.”

The speakers found that adult permissiveness, even defensiveness, topped the list of reasons why teenagers drink, and that such drinking can lead to alcoholism, drug addiction, crime and motor vehicle accidents that often end lives at a tragically young age.

Town police Chief Donald Bolduc and Chief Deputy Troy Morton of the Penobscot County Sheriff’s Department told attendees that adults often deny their children’s involvement in drinking parties even after the kids have been caught.

“The rite of passage is a huge thing. People seem to think, ‘It’s OK as long as I am not drinking and driving,'” Morton said. “Drinking and driving is only one of the issues. It’s the one you see the most, but I am here to tell you that every other crime you have is linked to underage drinking.”

Most homicides, suicides, criminal mischief, thefts and date rapes reported throughout Penobscot County – not just in Millinocket – have that common factor, Morton said. Cocaine, marijuana and prescription drug abuse also are climbing, they said.

Underage drinking is the No. 1 drug problem in Maine, contributing to teen depression, suicide, academic failure and violence, including sexual assault and homicide. Local Maine Youth Drug and Alcohol Use Survey results indicate that pupils as young as middle school age are experimenting with substance use and that alcohol is the drug of choice.

School and police officials are reacting to the problem. School officials have beefed up anti-drinking and drug usage policies, Maloney said, and police are targeting areas like gravel pits where parties occur. Town officials are planning a drug-free post prom party at River Driver’s restaurant and raising money to fund it.

The Katahdin Area Partnership, which helped host the summit and has another meeting planned for April 11 at Ruthie’s restaurant in Medway, also drew accolades for focusing attention on the problem.

“Things are changing in Millinocket already,” Bolduc said. “We are definitely heading in the right direction.”