Reducing underage drinking is an important goal for youth, parents and adults from seven valley schools, including Eastmont Junior and Senior High Schools, and groups like Boy Scouts, Youth United, Grant County and Douglas County. They’re highlighting the issue with a special demonstration, which you may see or join in if you’re near Odabashian Bridge Friday, March 18 between 5 and 6 pm.

Two agencies have organized the effort with $2000 in grants from RUAD, The Washington State Coalition to Reduce Underage Drinking. The group in Douglas County is the Eastmont Power of Youth advised by Armentia Tenner, a Student Assistant Specialist at Eastmont. In Chelan County, Eveline Roy at the Chelan-Douglas Traffic Safety Council wrote a similar grant.

                 Their demonstration’s first priority is safety for drivers and demonstrators. Sign carriers should stand behind barriers on the bicycle path across the bridge. Traffic safety rules prohibit signs with words that would distract drivers, so they’ll stand side by side with white signs that have a thick blue line across the middle. The plan is to make an indelible impression with a thick blue line across the bridge.

                  The awareness campaign theme is, “Let’s draw a line between youth and alcohol.” They are asking for a commitment, a behavioral pledge, to do something that draws a barrier between youth and alcohol.

                 They are competing with an upsurge in alcohol marketing to youth 12 to 20 years of age. TV advertising to that age group increased 71 percent since 2001 according to the Council on Alcohol Marketing and Youth at Johns Hopkins University. The organizer’s modest goal was to counter that onslaught with commitment cards from 200 youth and adults explaining why they’re signing and what they’ll do.

Armentia emailed me that they’ve exceeded their goal. “We have collected over 400 commitment cards from Community Members, State, City and County Officials; youth and adults alike. If anyone wants to go on line and sign the commit card, they can locate it at www.starttalkingnow.org.

When I asked Armentia for some examples of actions, she read one that said, “Not give any alcohol to any child.” That’s important because by far the most common way youth get alcohol is from friends who give it to them according to the 2008 Chelan Douglas Healthy Youth survey.

Other actions include over a dozen businesses have allowed campaign signs on cooler doors and/or check out counters in Wenatchee, Chelan and East Wenatchee at EZ Mart 76 Station on Grant Road. 

These actions and social statements sound innocuous. But research from programs available through the Chelan-Douglas Together for Drug Free Youth and available at starttalkingnow.org show that creating social norms against drugs and alcohol are effective at reducing use. The site also has pledge cards.

                 Warning about alcohol should start in elementary school. Youth report the average age for their first drink 12.8 years old. Yet 58 percent of eighth-graders in Chelan-Douglas said their parents had NOT talked to them about alcohol more than once in the last year. Twenty percent of all eighth-graders also admitted drinking alcohol in the last 30 days.

Let me confess a disappointing conversation my wife and I had with our college age daughter. All three of us participated in a survey about drinking, smoking and substance abuse. Karen and I confidently said yes we had talked with her when she was a youngster about not smoking and the difficulty we both had giving it up. She responded to the survey by saying she couldn’t recall those conversations, although she knew we’d smoked. It was another humiliating reminder parenting was tougher than we realized.

Make another commitment to erect a thick social barrier between youth and alcohol, whether you’re a youth, parent, legal distributor or any other adult. Police need support on the thin blue line they walk separating lawlessness and order. Commit to a thick blue line.