Community must confront forces that condone drinking

Dawn Taylor

Approach 3: Educate for societal change.

Efforts to reduce alcohol abuse by enforcing laws or treating it as a public health epidemic are likely to be ineffectual until we confront the campus-community norms that condone excessive drinking. Happy Valley residents need to acknowledge that the conditions that contribute to Penn State’s ranking as a top party school extend to the community as a whole.

While in many ways this is a great place to live, learn and work, we cannot close our eyes to the fact that children growing up here are confronted with models for irresponsible drinking in ways that those living in many other communities are not. It is easy to see why young people get the wrong idea about drinking when they witness the widespread association of alcohol and social events, such as football tailgates, fraternity parties, and “holidays” such as State Patty’s Day.

According to government- sponsored research, young people who start drinking before the age of 15 tend to develop more alcohol-related problems and are four times more likely to develop an addiction to alcohol than their peers who wait until age 21 to drink. Yet a recent survey of Centre County students shows that the average age at which our children have their first drink is 12.6 years. That’s the age of a typical seventh-grader.

The key to reducing abuse is making sure that we, especially young people and their families, have a clear understanding of alcohol’s negative effects on health, family, school and work. Education motivates action by providing accurate information. The anti-smoking campaign provides a useful model. Many of us remember a time when smoking was socially acceptable in Mountain-view Hospital, the old State Theatre,

even in Penn State classrooms. It was education in schools, public awareness campaigns, government warnings and media portrayals that changed social norms around smoking here and across the country.

Through education, we have the capacity to create new norms for drinking. Our message: Only adults should drink alcohol, and they should drink in a safe and responsible manner. What can be cone?

•Expand local school districts’ prevention programs

•Support public awareness campaigns such as those sponsored by LION Walk and the Centre County Prevention Coalition

•Support educational programs such as Penn State’s AlcoholEdu for freshmen

•Raise alcohol taxes to discourage consumption by young people and fund educational programs

•Ban all alcohol advertising and pressure the media to stop glamorizing alcohol use

•Increase awareness of alcohol-free activities such as LateNight Penn State and Bellefonte’s Fifth Quarter

Dawn Taylor is the community mobilizer for Care Partnership Centre Region Communities That Care and a member of the Centre County Prevention Coalition.