CITIZENS RALLYING FOR CHANGE ON ALCOHOL

It’s Saturday night, and kids all over North America are hanging out at their friends’ houses, watching movies, going to parties. And children as young as 11 are taking their first drink of alcohol—the average age when boys start drinking. For girls, that age is now 13. More and more kids are drinking hard liquor, and an alarming number of those teens and pre-teens are binge drinking, which is defined as consuming 5 or more drinks of any alcohol in one setting for boys, and 4 or more drinks for girls.

“When I ask them if they drink to get drunk, they say, ‘Duh, that’s why we do it,’" says Dick Schaefer, an addiction counselor who has worked with chemically dependent teens for nearly thirty years. He is also the author of Choices and Consequences: What to Do When a Teenager Uses Alcohol/Drugs. “Getting drunk is the thing to do, and they associate it with fun.”

Traditionally, in the upcoming season of graduation, prom and other kid rites of passage, the amount of alcohol young people drink soars. What's important, says Schaefer, is to keep the lines of communication open before an incident occurs—and know how to deal with your child if you do catch them drinking.  "They’re not sipping alcohol—they’re gulping it down like soda.”—Dick Schaefer

The fact is, kids are hitting the bottle in greater numbers these days, enough to cause the Surgeon General to issue a report last year warning parents about alcohol consumption among minors. According to the study, there are 11 million underage drinkers in the U.S., and 7.2 million of those teens and pre-teens are binge drinking. The reasons for the surge among teens and pre-teens in recent years are many: Kids are gravitating towards the newer, flavored hard liquors the alcohol industry is producing. And “They’re not sipping—they’re gulping it down like soda,” says Schaefer. “The kids I see tell me they drink every weekend, at least four times a month. And they get drunk each time.”

He considers alcohol to be the number one risk for teens and pre-teens when it comes to substance abuse. The Surgeon General calls it “The drug of choice for teens in America."