21 Reasons successfully put on our first annual Chalk it Up to Prevention event on October 8, 2010 in Monument Square. We had perfect weather, great company, interested media, and spectacular community involvement.
Thanks to many local artists, city council members, commissioner Shaughnessy, Mayor Mavodones, Day One, the Portland Police Department, and Ethos Marketing, we as a community were able to portray the many ways we can work together to prevent underage drinking.
Most folks in a recent survey found using social networking pages in order to reduce underage drinking is OK. This is according to a recent poll by the Leadership to Keep Children Alcohol Free Foundation, consisting of current and former Governor First Ladies, and/or their designees.
What do you think? Public domain or breach of privacy? How far should adults go to reduce underage drinking?
We welcome your comments!
Looking for more news? You can find lots more links to local, national, and international news about underage drinking and its prevention and enforcement at our Delicious page.
- Involve all segments of the community — youths, parents, lawmakers, law enforcement, health care, schools and the media.
- Determine specific community norms that permit or encourage teen drinking and target our efforts toward changing those norms.
- Provide facts about the potential dangers of drinking — sugar-coating the realities is not effective, any more than over-dramatizing them.
- Provide youth-driven, safe, healthy and fun alternatives to drinking alcohol.
- Present clear NO-USE messages regarding underage drinking.
- Continue talking with (not at) our youth about the pressure to drink, offer skills to resist the pressure and have an open door for dialogue when the issue arises.
- Educate adults about the warning signs of alcohol use by youth, the effects of their own attitudes about alcohol use and where to go for help if needed.
- Support law enforcement officials in enforcing the 21-year-old drinking age, in enforcing the laws that exist to deter adults from purchasing alcohol for minors, in adopting policies for detecting and terminating underage drinking parties and in strengthening compliance check programs in retail outlets.
- Utilize existing key resources to learn what has and has not worked. The realities of underage drinking have multiple layers and need a multi-layered approach.
As the new school year begins, it is important to keep in mind how meaningful and effective talking to your kids really is. Even as schedules become more hectic and conflicting, we want you to remember that even the small stuff can make a difference.
A recent study done by The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University has found that having regular dinners as a family will in fact put your child at less risk of using alcohol or drugs even as they are confronted with the pressure to do so in and outside of school.
If you haven’t been having family dinners lately, September 27, 2010 would be a great day to start. It’s the annual Family Day created by CASA, and it will be held across the nation. We urge you to participate! Family Day was created in 1992 by Joseph A. Califano Jr. in an effort to prevent the abuse of illegal drinking and drug abuse. Since its instillation CASA has done research that proves having a meal with your kids, listening and being interested in their lives, and informing them about the dangers of alcohol and drugs can have an impact.
Whether it’s a family dinner, a family breakfast, or even a game night, doing family activities is a simple prevention method.
And if you get a chance during dinner, you can talk to your kids about your expectation that they stay drug and alcohol-free.
Also check out The Partnership for a Drug-Free America for a guide to the Teen Brain and tips for parenting a teenager.
Call for Artists, Businesses, Galleries, Youth, Parents, YOU!
Portland, ME- 21 Reasons is hosting our first annual, “Chalk It Up to Prevention.” On Friday, October 1 Portland’s sidewalks will illustrate ways to prevent underage drinking.
Community members will draw on the sidewalk between Monument Square and Congress Square, from 11 -3, illustrating the many ways we all can prevent underage drinking. These chalk artworks will be visible throughout the First Friday Art Walk that evening.
Participants needed! We need artists, business participants, setup and cleanup help.
The rain date is October 8.
FMI:
Call: 207-773-7737
Email: 21reasons@mcd.org
Visit: www.21reasons.org
Time for Prom and Graduation? Time To Talk with Your Teens
Prom season is fast approaching, and for many teens, this time of year offers a taste of new freedoms and the temptation to engage in risky behavior. A new study of 11th and 12th grade students from across the country shows that teens don't recognize the dangers of driving on prom and graduation night, even though they recognize their peers may be more likely to drink on these occasions. Nearly all of the students surveyed, 90 percent, reported that their peers are more likely to drink on prom night and 79 percent reported the same for graduation night. Despite believing that their peers are more likely to drink during prom and graduation, only 29 percent reported that they believe driving on prom night is dangerous, while 25 percent said the same for graduation night.
The study surveyed over 2,500 students and was conducted by ORC Guideline for Liberty Mutual and Students Against Destructive Decisions (SADD).What You Can Do to Help Keep Prom Goers and New Graduates Safe?
To keep celebrations safe and healthy, here are some helpful tips and advice for parents and caregivers:Know Your Teens' Plans and tell them to update you if the itinerary changes so you're aware of their whereabouts.
Check In With Them Via Text - they are more likely to reply, since it's discreet. You can send messages like "Hope ur having a gr8 time!" or "U OK?" before and after the dance.
Trust Your Teens and resist the urge to hover. You've filled them in on the rules and the risks - chances are they got the message.
What are some examples of healthy risk-taking activities?
Sports and developing artistic and creative abilities -- be it through art or theater -- are all activities that involve healthy levels of risk-taking. Teens can engage in volunteer activities, and even Internet activities. It can be as simple -- and as scary -- as getting up on stage, or asking somebody out, says Steinberg. All these behaviors may satisfy a teen's need to push boundaries, but are usually in an environment where there's very little harm that could result.
Adults have patterns of risk-taking, too -- think about what they are, and model good behavior. …Steinberg agrees. "Teens who drink a lot often come from households where their parents drink a lot. Teens model their parents. Even though parents think their teens ignore them, they watch them."
To celebrate the fact that underage drinking rates in Portland have been declining since 1995, 21 Reasons, an underage drinking prevention coalition, is sponsoring a Prom Photo Contest. Why? Since underage drinking can harm the developing brain (which actually stops developing at the ripe old age of 25!), this decline in drinking rates is cause for celebration!Often in our work to prevent underage drinking, we hear the argument that countries with a lower minimum legal drinking age (MLDA) have fewer problems with alcohol. And since Canada is our nearest neighbor—and the Canadian MLDA is 19 in most provinces (18 in Alberta, Manitoba, and Quebec)—we thought we’d share recent research results about teen drinking in Canada—and compare them with stats from Portland, Maine.
| | Manitoba 2009 | Portland 2008 |
| % of 9th graders who drank in the past month | 39% | 32% |
| % of 12th graders who drank in the past month | 69% | 52% |
| | | |
| % of 9th graders who binge drank recently | 19% (within 30 days) | 18% (within 2 weeks) |
| % of 12th graders who binge drank recently | 51% (within 30 days) | 31% (within 2 weeks) |
The Manitoban government is addressing these issues “by boosting fines, cranking up public-awareness campaigns and convening a summit on the issue. [They] also vowed [March 4] to beef up enforcement of laws preventing the sale of tobacco to minors, while boosting fines for offending clerks and retailers”(source)—exactly the kind of environmental prevention efforts** that can help lower those rates.
**”Prevention aimed at the environment is based on the community systems perspective that views a community as a set of persons engaged in shared social, cultural, political, and economic processes.” [http://wch.uhs.wisc.edu/docs/SIG/fisher-EnvironmentalPreventionStrategies.pdf] Environmental prevention basically looks to change the context that youth live in to support their healthy choices.
There’s a common myth among parents that letting your kids drink under your supervision is better than not knowing where they are, if they’ll be driving, and so on. But a new study conducted by researchers at the University of California, San Diego, found a difference between the brains of teens who drank and those who didn’t.
The study started when none of the teen subjects had ever had alcohol. Over the next few years, however, some of the teens began to drink. Those that did drink were often bingeing (4-5 drinks a night) two or three nights a month.
The binge drinkers did worse on memory tests; binge-drinking boys also did worse on tests of attention, while the binge-drinking girls were worse when their spatial reasoning was tested.
What’s especially surprising is that the damage shows up so quickly. Just two of those “supervised” parties a month – approximately the same rate that the teens in the study were drinking – could potentially lead to brain damage. The study says that the performance of the non-drinkers to the binge drinkers can be compared to a whole grade point: like “the difference between
an A and a B”.
While the study does note that more research needs to be done to find out if the damage is reversible, it’s hard to imagine that it’s a risk a parent would be willing to take. And why make the complicated and difficult teen years harder?
So what can you do? Share this information with other parents. We know that it can be hard to talk about underage drinking with the parents of your child’s friends—but we think that preventing brain damage and school trouble is great motivation. Talk to other parents about the rules you set in your home, and find out their rules as well.
The story was featured on NPR on January 25th.
For more information, visit us at www.21reasons.org. We even have a resource section just for parents.
How do you get kids to behave in a certain way while keeping them feeling good about themselves? It’s a tricky situation for parents and mentors. Always correcting a child’s behavior by telling them that they’re wrong may not be very helpful. A recent post to the Portland Public Schools’ Listserv reminded us of this excellent advice:
If the coach says "Don't miss," the kicker hears two negatives, "don't" and "miss." Thinking about avoiding the negatives, the kicker sees the goal posts or the edges of failure. Instead, suggests Jimmie, the coach should say, "Make the kick." Now the kicker looks right down the middle and the goal posts seem to get wider. Odds are now better the kicker will indeed make the kick to win the game….Parents to toddlers walking near puddles, instead of "Don't get your feet wet," how about "Keep your feet dry." Source
But research shows that youth are far less likely to drink alcohol if they believe their parents think it would be “very wrong.”
So how can parents get this message across in a positive way?
Maybe the solution is to put the primary emphasis on the things that ARE expected: do your best in school, protect your brain and your body, be kind and considerate of others, be truthful about what you’re doing and who you’re doing it with, go to parties where parents are present and no alcohol is available to youth, be home by curfew. Then, within that context, list some of the things that would interfere—such as drinking alcohol before age 21.
That's the Super Bowl, you know. The Marin Institute has once again launched a campaign encouraging kids to submit anti-alcohol ads in opposition to the tsunami of beer and alcohol advertising that happen during the Super Bowl. The contest is called "Free the Bowl."
In this year's contest Big Alcohol is personified as "Big Al:"
Marin Institute has launched its second annual, nationwide anti-alcohol-advertising contest, FREE the BOWL™. This year's theme is to "Free the Bowl from Big Al," (a.k.a Big Alcohol), as youth contestants will identify where they see the negative influences of Big Al in their lives.
The contest for youth and young adults from ages 10 to 25 seeks original anti-alcohol-ads 30 to 60 seconds long to counter excessive alcohol advertising and marketing. The alcohol industry watchdog launched the contest at www.FreeTheBowl.com today and will use the site as well as YouTube to showcase video entries. The contest deadline is January 25, 2010, two weeks before the Super Bowl, the biggest alcohol advertising and inebriation day of the year. This year groups may compete, such as high school or college classes.
Are you thinking of making a Free the Bowl ad? Check out last year's winners.
This Thursday, May 21, Dr. Dennis Embry, a nationally-renowned psychologist, will be speaking in South Portland about Raising Healthy Kids.
