Social service providers combating teen alcohol abuse say there are too many adults who take the misguided view that all teens drink, and therefore condone drinking in their own teenage sons and daughters. Tooele City Police Chief Ron Kirby seconds that, saying he has also seen situations where adults take a permissive attitude toward teen drinking — with negative consequences down the line.
How many times have we heard of adults buying beer or other alcoholic beverages for minors? In some cases, these adults are not even acquainted with the kids they buy for. There’s simply a parking-lot request, an appeal to do the “cool” thing and some money changing hands.
Some adults might think they’re not hurting teens when they give them alcohol in small amounts. They’re wrong. Alcohol addiction grabs ahold of kids during these formative years. In addition, teen drinking is almost invariably drinking to excess, which brings a host of other problems, such as sexual assaults.
To fight teen drinking, Tooele County recently launched a program aimed at changing attitudes as well as behaviors — for both teens and adults. This commendable program will pull together the collective resources of the school district, law enforcement, Communities That Care, Valley Mental Health and Boys and Girls Clubs to attack the problem from multiple angles.
But the key stakeholder in any effort to combat teen drinking must be the ordinary adult citizen. Adults need to take the county’s zero-tolerance policy to heart and never allow themselves to become the means by which teens obtain alcohol. They also need to become aware of the fact that teen drinking is aberrant behavior, rather than something all kids do as a rite of passage.
Only when adults are serious about stopping teens from drinking can we insist on the same level of commitment from teens themselves.
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