Machias meeting tackles youth drinking

MACHIAS – Like 1,200 other communities across the country – and in about 30 within Maine – area professionals are speaking up this month on the perils of teenage drinking.

For lower Washington County towns, the time and place is 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, April, 11, at Carter’s Banquet Hall in Machias.

A similar gathering in the so-called “town meeting” format took place in Calais last week, drawing fewer than a dozen parents.

For this meeting, organizers are hoping that far more parents take part.

There will be four speakers: Alex Patel, the director of counseling services at the University of Maine at Machias; Sgt. Donnie Smith of the Washington County Sheriff’s Office; Bill Lowenstein, the assistant commissioner of the state’s Office of Substance Abuse in Augusta; and Rosemary Winslow, a special assistant to U.S. Rep. Michael Michaud, D-Maine.

“We are doing more outreach and more publicity for this one,” said Don Hallcom, who is the director of community services for the Regional Medical Center of Lubec.

“This is a serious issue. It’s a common and troubling thing.”

The meetings nationwide are coming just ahead of prom season, when many teens combine drinking and driving.

Federal money is behind the national push to get both parents and teenagers talking about the problem.

Tuesday’s meeting starts out with a hot dinner, catered by the Blue Bird Ranch Family Restaurant and served at no cost to those attending the meeting. The real cost is being covered by federal funding from the Center for Substance Abuse Prevention and the U.S. Department of Education.

Part of the money for the meeting comes from a $450,000 grant to implement an alcohol abuse curriculum within each of Washington County’s nine high schools this year and the next two years. That was U.S. Department of Education money assigned to SAD 19 in Lubec and administered by the Regional Medical Center of Lubec.

Since the program started in county schools in January, half-time coordinators in every school have been collecting baseline data about alcohol and substance abuse and attitudes among the county’s seniors. Sophomores and juniors will be included in the program starting in September.

Data collected so far has not yet been analyzed, Hallcom said.

According to national figures compiled by the 2004 National Survey on Drug Use and Health:

. Roughly 10.8 million underage persons ages 12 to 20 (28.7 percent) reported current alcohol use. Of these underage drinkers, 4.4 million were ages 12 to 17.

. Approximately 11.1 percent of 12-year-olds reported using alcohol at least once in their lifetimes. By age 13 the percentage doubles, and by age 15 it is more than 50 percent.

. Teens use alcohol more frequently than all illicit drugs combined. In addition to its negative impact on health, alcohol use among youth is strongly correlated with violence, risky sexual behavior, poor academic performance, alcohol-related driving incidents, and other harmful behaviors.

. Alcohol is responsible for six times the number of youth deaths than can be attributed to all other drugs combined.

“Parents continue to believe myths about their children’s drinking,” Hallcom said. “But it is still a rite of passage. Parents did it and they got away with it. There is more research now about drinking and adolescent brain development.”

For parents who want to get more involved beyond the meeting, there will be opportunities to participate in additional programs, Hallcom said.

Information on the national program to address youth drinking may be found at the Web site www.stopalcoholabuse.gov/townhall/townhallfaqs.aspx.