LEADING OUR YOUNG PEOPLE IN THE WRONG DIRECTION

YOU'RE a sailor crossing the Atlantic on a solo crossing. The Global
Positioning System is broken, as are your wireless satellite, e-mail and
phone. The maps have been washed overboard. Clouds hide the North Star. Sharks
are following, sensing dinner. Now you know what it must be like to be 10, or
12 or 16 years old today.

Adults, who are supposed to be the navigational tools for young people, are
walking off the job, shutting down their guidance systems, seemingly
everywhere we look.

The American Bar Association promotes needle exchange despite science that
says it doesn't work. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals tells
college students that drinking beer is healthier, more socially responsible
than drinking milk. Professional athletes, even college athletes, fill the
sports pages with stories of criminal or unethical behavior. Television shows
make promiscuous sex, smoking and drinking look glamorous and risk-free.

The ABA is just the latest respected institution to choose a political agenda
in direct contradiction of the scientific evidence at great cost to kids. They
claim that needle exchange programs reduce HIV transmission. They claim that
these programs don't increase drug use. They are absolutely wrong.

A comprehensive review of published studies fails to support the supposed
success of needle exchange programs in preventing HIV transmission. Indeed,
the largest studies conducted to date show just the opposite. In Montreal,
1,600 addicts participating in the needle exchange program were tested every
six months for, on average, 22 months. Participants were found to be sharing
needles. They were also three times more likely to become infected with HIV as
addicts not in the program, the Reader's Digest reports.

Is it asking too much of the adults setting policies to take a moment and
ponder what message they are sending young people? Clearly nobody at the ABA
did so. Clearly nobody at PETA did so. They launched an advertising campaign
targeting college students, saying that beer is healthier than milk and
suggesting they don't drink milk because that means that cows have to be
milked, and, PETA says, cows don't seem to like being milked. That would be
laughable, if it weren't so darn dangerous.

Alcohol can kill college students. Milk can't. It's illegal for most college
students to drink beer. It's legal to drink milk. And yet, there we saw it:
posters all over college campuses asking, "Got Beer?"

Story No. 1 in the sports section is as likely to be another account of a
professional athlete being suspended for drug abuse, arrested for battering
his wife or even jailed on suspicion of murder as it is a story about an
actual game. Given the behavior of many athletes, parents often have to
monitor ESPN's SportsCenter as if it were HBO's "The Sopranos."

Meanwhile, Hollywood makes risk-taking behavior look cool. A recent study
found that prime time television rarely portrays the real-life consequences of
unhealthy behavior, such as the all-too-common occurrence of contracting a
dangerous sexually transmitted infection as a teen-ager.

IT all adds up to a world of adults who are giving young people permission to
participate in unhealthy behaviors that can permanently scar their futures.

We adults need to realize the important responsibility we have as role models.
Like it or not, we are the compass and the navigational system young people
must have to steer successfully into adulthood.

When kids look around, it's enough to make them ask, "Where are the adults
when we need them?"

Shepherd Smith is founder and president of the Institute for Youth
Development, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that promotes a consistent,
comprehensive risk-avoidance message to youth.