KIDS & ALCOHOL A CONTROVERSIAL ALTERNATIVE TO 'JUST SAY NO'

Along the road to adulthood, most teenagers drink alcoholic beverages. Most
of them get drunk; some of them often.

This is known from experience and from troubling statistics that try to
measure the severity of alcohol abuse among America's youth today. In recent
years, surveys have told us that 44 percent of college students report binge
drinking (five drinks in a row). They tell us that 56 percent of
eighth-graders and 71 percent of 10th-graders report that they have used
alcohol; that 28 percent of high school seniors say they have consumed five
or more drinks in one sitting in the previous two weeks.

The sobering reality is that, with the exception of ubiquitous
don't-drink-and-drive warnings, too many teenagers drink too much with too
little regard to the consequences and risks.

This message is tragically restated year after year when one more
vodka-chugging fraternity pledge chokes to death on his own vomit, or yet
another drunk collegian falls from a window, or the next carload of drunk
high schoolers plows head-on into a tree.

>From last week's vote in the U.S. Senate to enact a nationally uniform .08 percent blood-alcohol DWI law, to the alcohol-abuse initiatives now started on nearly every university campus, there is a new urgency among civic leaders, safety and medical authorities, college administrators -- even some students -- to do something to curb underage drinking.

But the best intervention may not come on campuses, in counselors' offices,
or by laws and prohibitions. Some alcohol-education experts believe that to
dissuade youngsters from abusing alcohol, there's no place like home.

"You have to recognize that the majority of young people are going to
experiment. And, on occasion, they are going to drink too much," says David
Hanson, professor of sociology at State University of New York at Potsdam.

The author of the 1997 book "Alcohol Education: What We Must Do" (Praeger,
$49), Hanson has studied the use and abuse of alcohol among young people for
three decades. His conclusion: Parents need to teach their children about
alcohol and the risks of excessive drinking. And, saying "don't drink"
doesn't begin to cover it. "They are much safer if you introduce them to
drinking yourself," says Hanson. "That's how you protect them."

Part of the problem is that alcohol education in this country is dominated
by zero-tolerance thinking that Hanson says ignores reality, uses scare
tactics, and has proven itself to be ineffective. "We've got these two
conflicting views," he explains. "One says 'Just say no' and the other says
'Learn how to drink appropriately.' The just-say-no orientation tries to
prevent students from drinking or to delay the onset of drinking . . . and
that's swimming against the cultural tide and the experience of young people
and adults."

One argument against teaching young people moderation in drinking is that
drinking is illegal under age 21. "But we teach civics to people in middle
school to prepare them to be responsible citizens -- and they can't vote or
hold office," argues Hanson. "We wouldn't turn driver education over to your
kids' peers; we don't tell them nothing about driving and then turn the keys
over to them when they're old enough. But people actually do that with
drinking."

Some sex education programs do emphasize abstinence, he adds. "There's
nothing wrong with teaching kids abstinence. But, hopefully, those teenagers
who don't heed the message won't get pregnant and won't get a disease
because they have also been prepared."

Harvard social psychologist Henry Wechsler says youngsters need to be made
aware of the dangers of drinking too much. And that's especially true, he
says, of aspiring college students who are heading into the highest-volume
consumption zone, the college campus, where liquor laws traditionally are
ignored, alcohol is readily available, and peer pressure to drink large
quantities is intense.

"Young people drink more than people of other ages," says Wechsler, whose
research investigates collegiate binge drinking. "College students drink
more than their high school peers who didn't go to college."

But educating teenagers about moderate drinking and about the dangers of
excess "is a very complex issue," says Wechsler. "When kids go to college,
you want them to be on their own. You want them to form their own choices.
But you've got to guide them. You have to try to remove risks to the extent
that you can."

The latest alarm to send shock waves through those studying alcohol and
youth issues was the release of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and
Alcoholism (NIAAA) study three weeks ago that reported the younger someone
starts drinking, the greater the chance of alcoholism later in life.

Dwight B. Heath says that finding fuels the just-say-no approach he blames
for much of the allure of drinking among American teenagers. "In countries
where people start to drink at an early age, alcohol is not a mystical,
magical thing," says the professor of anthropology at Brown University. The
author of the "International Handbook on Alcohol and Culture," he has
studied drinking practices and problems in different cultures worldwide over
three decades. He has recently received some funding from the International
Center for Alcohol Policies, an industry-related group that studies and
promotes alcohol's cultural and social roles and the reduction of alcohol
abuse. "By banning it [until age 21], we make it clear those people who
start drinking before that age are deviant, countercultural,
breaking-the-law-and-knowing-it risk takers."

In other words, it's just what many teenagers aspire to -- a symbol of being
grown up, of being in reaction against their parents' generation, against
authority.

"We have set it up for problems," he says. "In cultures that don't set it up
for problems, where it is by and large accepted, people don't drink to get
drunk because they know that's a stupid thing to do. In much of our youth
here, you have the idea of drinking precisely to get drunk. And that's a
dangerous business."

Acting badly, stepping into traffic, getting into fights, indulging in
unprotected sex, getting into automobile accidents, "there are all kinds of
risks that go with drunkenness that don't go with moderate social drinking,"
says Heath, who urges parents to teach their children how not to drink and
how to drink in a sane and sensible manner. "It's not how much you drink,
it's how you drink."

David Hanson advises parents to start earlier than the teen years --
especially since the average age youngsters start experimenting is 13. "You
need to start from their earliest consciousness by being a good role model,"
he says. "So you don't get drunk, you don't laugh at jokes that involve
drunkenness. When you're watching television, point out what's right and
what's wrong about drinking -- and the consequences of getting drunk.
Similarly, if you abstain from alcohol, as many people do, teach your
children abstinence -- but also teach them some risk reductions, just in
case."

Some practical advice beyond never drink and drive that parents should give
children? Warn against drinking for the sake of drinking, or as a game,
experts recommend. Warn against drinking to forget one's troubles. Drinking
on an empty stomach is a bad idea. So is drinking more than one alcoholic
beverage per hour -- about the limit most people can handle without becoming
impaired.

Teach them to know when they've had enough and how to stop. Tell them not to
leave alone someone who is drunk. They need to know that drinking too much
too fast can be fatal, that the alcohol itself can poison their system and
shut down their breathing.

"I think the dangers of drunkenness are very real -- unlike the dangers of
drinking," says Heath, who espouses taking alcohol education in the home to
a level some would say is controversial. He recommends parents who are
comfortable with the idea emulate the ordinary practice of French, Greek and
Italian homes where youngsters are introduced to

watered-down wine or a sip of beer early in life.

"In the privacy of their homes, many people would do well, in effect, to
teach their kids how to drink appropriately," says Heath, who believes that
helps to trivialize drinking and undermine its mystique. "Perhaps serve a
little bit to them on occasion. In some states, that's against the law. But
drinking in small volume really needs to be part of their education."

When Heath hears about another alcohol tragedy, he is all the more convinced
that alcohol education begins at home: "Drawing clear and realistic
guidelines is the business of parents and society."

© Copyright 1998 The Washington Post Company