More News Columnists

• Bill Slakey: As Trib closes, many questions remain unasked
• Phill Casaus: Don't cry for us, Albuquerque; it was worth it
• Joline Gutierrez Krueger: My Wall of Fame holds memories of people, stories that have mattered

MOST RECENT TRIB STORIES

• ABQTrib.com to remain available
  08:48 a.m., February 25, 2008
• Congressman is indicted
  08:37 a.m., February 23, 2008
• Series of attacks target Green Zone
  08:36 a.m., February 23, 2008
• Iran is defying U.N., agency says
  08:35 a.m., February 23, 2008
• Waterboarding approval probed
  08:34 a.m., February 23, 2008

TRIB IN THE BLOGOSPHERE*

• Ty Murray Invitational thrills fans in Albuquerque
• Is Rome Burning?
• Ominous Skies
• The Road to Invalidation
• Albuquerque company participates in “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition”

*Note: The Tribune does not create and is not responsible for the blogosphere's headlines and stories. These links to blogs talking about ABQTrib.com are automatically generated. Use them at your own risk.

STORY TOOLS

• E-mail story
• Comments
• iPod friendly
• Printer friendly

SHARE THIS STORY [?]

Let me throw a couple of statistics at you regarding our kids and drinking booze.

Here in New Mexico, just over a third of ninth graders and almost half of 11th and 12th graders reported drinking alcohol within the past month, according to a 2005 study by the University of New Mexico.

We're not talking about a tentative sip or two. Sixty percent of those ninth graders and 70 percent of those 11th and 12th graders reported those occasions were five drinks or more, or "binge" occasions.

That's a lot of alcohol. A frightening amount, in fact.

It is part and parcel of the new world order when it comes to kids and booze - the subject of the Surgeon General's Call to Action To Prevent and Reduce Underage Drinking.

The surgeon general, Dr. Kenneth Moritsugu, was in Albuquerque and Santa Fe this week as part of an eight-state tour to promote the program.

I'm the parent of a ninth grader, and the events of the week have left me pretty well shaken and stirred.

I was one of those kids who drank, not quite to the point of bingeing that early. Still, I was in a peer group that did. It was all fun and games then, seemingly. Looking back from age 49 at the toll it took on the members of that peer group, it's not humorous by any stretch.

This is going to be a tough one, because we've backed ourselves into a corner that makes wagging a finger at kids and alcohol use fairly absurd.

But we need to find a way, because as the surgeon general points out in his call to action, "underage alcohol consumption is a major societal problem with enormous health and safety consequences and will demand the nation's attention and committed effort to solve."

There is no way possible to overstate the enormity of the problem.

The three leading causes of death for teens are car crashes, suicides and homicides. Binge drinking has a fingerprint on all of those, as well as on physical and sexual assault, unwanted pregnancies, suicide and anything else tragic.

I had the good fortune to moderate a closed-door forum with the surgeon general and a stellar group of pediatricians, physicians, educators, child psychiatrists and policy makers at Lovelace Medical Center. It was freewheeling, informative and frightening at times.

These people are not in a position to mince words. My sense was this was an opportunity to finally get across what they have been screaming in the wind about for many years.

Consider our situation: This drug is supported by a frenzied media tsunami that says to kids, in essence, "Why wait? Come join the party." When they turn from the television and look at us, the party is in full swing. With one hand, we wag a finger at them; with the other, we hold a bottle of beer. And a 13-year-old is to deduce what exactly after that?

Worse yet, misguided parents often midwife this misguided rite of passage, with the foolish notion that if the parent buys the alcohol and allows their kid and their peers to get blasted in the garage they are somehow doing a better deed. Insane.

The research on this has come into its own, and there is no good result possible from drinking this early. It shows there's at least five times the likelihood that kids who begin to drink before 15 will develop major problems with alcohol as adults. Sit with that one for a second.

Think about the friends you had at 15 - or younger - whom you still know today. Among my friends who tipped it early and often, the results were not good in later years. My heart aches thinking about them, some quite brilliant in their own way, who flat out took the wrong exit too early and never came back.

This is going to be hard. Incredibly so. But so was tobacco, and the results have been rather stunning given the enormity of that challenge.

We can do this. We have to.