Maginn forum explored underage drinking issue

Maginn forum explored underage drinking issue

Personally, the topic of underage drinking - covered in a recent forum at Bishop Maginn High School in Albany - didn't apply to me.

Professionally, it made perfect sense for me to attend: Working at the Addictions Care Center of Albany as director of community relations, I know many substance abuse prevention and treatment professionals.

Staff Sgt. Lenny Crouch, Stop-DWI coordinator, has been a long-standing advocate of educating the community about the dangers of underage drinking. I know Lenny well, respect him as a person and colleague and understand that his mission is as much personal as it is professional.

But I could only relate to the professional side of Lenny's mission - until the forum.

My job has influenced me to speak with my children about underage drinking and how necessary it is to understand that alcohol and other drugs can permanently alter your brain chemistry. The message about the many dangers of drinking has been delivered to my children, no doubt.

As a parent, I also convinced myself that Maginn's underage drinking forum would focus on what will happen as my son enters the later years of high school and college someday.

This forum would introduce him to what is to come; my 12-year-old son, a seventh-grader in a suburban middle school, would only know of these incidences anecdotally, through the words of those 16- and 17-year-olds who had been to a party once and tried alcohol.

Boy, was I wrong. Not only was my son informed, engaged and educated about drinking, drugging and destructive behaviors, he was aware that kids smoke pot and steal alcohol from their parents' refrigerators because the parents don't know it has gone missing!

My reaction was part denial, part astonishment: not in my school district, my neighborhood, my backyard. As the forum went on, it became painfully obvious that we have a problem - and it's in your school district, your neighborhood and your backyard, too.

Children today are being exposed to alcohol and other drugs at an alarmingly early age. According to the 2008 New York State Youth Development Survey (YDS), underage drinking remains the biggest New York State substance use problem in junior and senior high.

Alcohol is the most commonly-used drug among adolescents. Youth who begin drinking before age 15 are four times more likely to develop alcohol dependence than those who abstain until age 21. The Albany County use rate is higher than the national average.

What can be done?

• Talk with your children about these issues - not at them, but with them - and keep talking. Alter the message to be appropriate for their ages.

• Get to know your children's friends and their parents. Find out their policy on alcohol and other drugs.

• Reinforce the message to your child that they should never allow someone who has been drinking or using other drugs to drive them anywhere.

For more tips on how to talk to your kids, contact the ACCA at 518-465-5829 or www.theacca. net.

(Karen Karl is director of community relations at the Addictions Care Center of Albany, a parent and catechist at St. Thomas School and parish in Delmar.)

(05/27/10)