CITIZENS RALLYING FOR CHANGE ON ALCOHOL

My wife and I were a bit surprised a few months after we'd moved from Illinois to Madison by what we found at an open house for our son's preschool: a tub full of beer for parents.

Well, we thought, we're definitely in Wisconsin.

And since then, Wisconsin hasn't disappointed.

Many neighborhood block parties might as well employ bartenders, kids are a regular sight at Downtown bar and grills, and Madison's many street festivals almost always have (well-patronized) beer tents — thus allowing parents to hoist a quality craft brew with one hand and hold onto junior with the other.

I distinctly remember one scene in particular from my first Orton Park Fest.

It was near dark and dozens, if not scores, of children were swarming over the park's main play structure (and occasionally falling from it). Surrounding them in a big, loose circle were their parents — chatting, laughing and, in many cases, drinking. My God, I thought, it's a personal injury lawyer's dream.

All this came to mind when I read that Madison Mayor Paul Soglin is bucking the will of the city's Alcohol License Review Committee by opposing a liquor license for the Goodman Community Center.

Soglin said his main opposition to giving the center a license is that he doesn't think it needs one to do what it says it wants to do — have more control over the events there where liquor is served. But there are other concerns, too.

"I basically believe that a community center oriented toward kids and a liquor license are incompatible," he said.

Say what? This in a state built on beer, where kids cheer on the only team in major American professional sports with an alcohol-themed name?

I find it interesting and potentially admirable for the mayor of the state's second largest city to counter the booze culture because it raises the question of what, exactly, Wisconsin kids are learning from it.

Apparently, not much good.

Richard Brown, a physician and clinical director of the Wisconsin Initiative to Promote Healthy Lifestyles (and a self-described moderate drinker), had this not-very-subtle answer when I asked him whether the state's liberal attitude toward drinking around kids makes for more kids who turn into drunks or get into other alcohol-related trouble: "absolutely, without a doubt, yes."

He went on to remind me of the downside of Wisconsin's love affair with alcohol — the early deaths and illnesses, the highest rates of drunken driving and binge drinking in the nation, the violence and crime — and concluded by saying that if we expect to cut down on these problems, "we have to change our strong drinking culture.

"We have to make drinking seem less normal, less ordinary, less expected," he said. "Kids in Wisconsin need to observe much more often that people can have fun without alcohol."

Well, OK. But is it really fair to blame alcohol-related problems on the presence of alcohol around kids? 

After all, European countries have a history of looser restrictions on underage drinking and a culture that accepts drinking as part of regular family life. The effect on kids — at least as it's popularly understood — is that they grow up with more mature, more responsible attitudes toward alcohol.

Brown acknowledged that used to be the case but said most European countries have since adopted minimum drinking ages as American forms of drinking become more prevalent there. Wisconsin's drinking culture might stem from its Northern European heritage, he said, but the Northern European extended family structures and practices that tended to moderate drinking don't exist here now.

I'm not claiming that parents who, like me, take their kids to block parties and city festivals and have a beer or two are necessarily bad parents who are dooming their kids to lives of alcoholism and despair. I'm also not convinced that giving the Goodman Center an alcohol license — a wonderful organization I support that's only two blocks from my home — would lead to any problems there.

But it's easy to blame the state's anything-goes alcohol culture and its consequences on a state Legislature that stubbornly refuses to increase a ridiculously low beer tax or make first-offense drunken driving a crime. Or on an economic system that encourages prodigious amounts of alcohol advertising and marketing.

It's harder to consider the possibility that part of Wisconsin's drinking problem might also be rooted in the tendency among too many Wisconsin parents to hoist a beer at too many fun, otherwise family-friendly neighborhood fests.

A FEW THOUGHTS ON THIS ARTICLE:

Mr. Rickert asked the question, "...is it really fair to blame alcohol-related problems on the presence of alcohol around kids?" 

I believe that an article published by the National Institute of Health and the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism answers this question---

Children become aware of alcohol at an early age. By about five or six years of age, most children can identify alcoholic beverages by smell alone.⁴⁸ 

Interviews with eight- and nine-year-old children living in New Zealand revealed that one-third of them were aware of alcohol-related problems in their own environments.¹¹ 

Parental drinking patterns and access to alcohol are associated with adolescents starting and continuing drinking.²⁶  Conversely, children who are warned about the negative consequences of drinking are less likely to begin.²

Also, factors such as lack of parental support, monitoring, and communication contribute to alcohol abuse by adolescents. Children who are rejected or mistreated are much more likely to develop problems with alcohol.

Many adolescents develop positive expectations about alcohol use, which factor into their decision about whether to begin drinking.

These attitudes are influenced by positive depictions of alcohol use in movies, on television, and in advertisements. Our society has an ambivalent attitude toward alcohol consumption, sometimes restricting it and at other times promoting it.

For example, television networks in the United States show advertisements for beer and wine but not for distilled liquor. This voluntary ban on television advertising of hard liquor could end. The positive messages about drinking do not escape the notice of our youngest citizens.

A recent study examining 50 children’s animated films for examples of tobacco and alcohol use found that 25 of the films (50 percent) depicted alcohol use. Furthermore, the characters drinking alcohol were as likely to be “good” characters as “bad” ones.²²

As children grow older, their drinking or abstinence is influenced more by their peers and less by their parents. College students have been found to pattern their drinking after the amounts they perceive their peers to drink, not what their peers actually consume.^{4, 5, 49}  These students consistently overestimated the amount of alcohol consumed by their peers. This bias promotes heavier drinking habits. These studies also show that college students are less prone to heavy drinking after the spring term than the fall term. Presumably, they have experienced some of the negative consequences of alcohol abuse and temper their enthusiasm for drinking.

Young people are also prone to model their drinking patterns after people they admire, such as athletes, actors, and musicians.²⁹

Ultimately, each individual must decide whether to use alcohol or not.  But once they do, the negative consequences of underage drinking include a range of physical, academic, and social problems.

Perhaps most frightening, alcohol is the leading contributor to injury death, the main cause of death for people under age 21.(Smith et al. 1999; Levy et al. 1999; Hingson and Kenkel 2004).

However, alcohol also plays a powerful role in risky sexual behavior, including unwanted, unintended, and unprotected sexual activity, and sex with multiple partners. Alcohol is associated with academic failure and drug use.

Over the longer term, data have shown that drinking early in life is associated with an increased risk of developing an alcohol use disorder at some time during the life span.

So it's my belief that it is fair to blame alcohol-related problems on the presence of alcohol around kids.

2 Ary, D.V., Tildesley, E., Hops, H., and Andrews, J. 1993. The influence of parent, sibling, and peer modeling attitudes on adolescent use of alcohol. International Journal of Addiction, 28: 853–880

4 Baer, J.S. 1994. Effects of college residence on perceived norms for alcohol consumption: An examination of the first year in college. Psychology of Addictive Behaviors, 8: 43–50.

5 Baer, J.S., and Carney, M.M. 1993. Biases in perceptions of the consequences of alcohol use among college students. Journal of Studies on Alcohol, 54: 54–60.

11 Casswell, S., and Gilmore, L. 1983. Early experiences with alcohol: A survey of an eight and nine year old sample. New Zealand Medical Journal, 96: 1001–1003

22 Goldstein, A.O., Sobel, R.A., and Newman, G.R. 1999. Tobacco and alcohol use in G-rated children’s animated films. Journal of the American Medical Association, 281: 1131–1136

26 Hawkins, J.D., Graham, J.W., Maguin, E., Hill, K.G., and Catalano, R.F. 1997. Exploring the effects of age of alcohol use initiation and psychosocial risk factors on subsequent alcohol misuse. Journal of Studies on Alcohol, 58: 280–290.

29 Klein, J.D., Brown, J.D., Childers, K.W., Oliveri, J., Porter, C., and Dykers, C. 1993. Adolescents’ risky behavior and mass media use. Pediatrics, 92: 24–31.

48 Noll, R.B., Zucker, R.A., and Greenberg, G.S. 1990. Identification of alcohol by smell among preschoolers: evidence for early socialization about drugs occurring at home. Child Development, 61: 1520–1527.

49 Prentice, D.A., and Miller, D.T. 1993. Pluralistic ignorance and alcohol use on campus: some consequences of misperceiving the social norm. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 64: 243–256.