An urgent ‘Call to Action’
By JENNIFER KELLEY
Cherry Hill Sun
7/17/2007

Cherry Hill official: Onset of drinking happens at a younger age than ever before

According to the federal government, alcohol is the drug of choice for America’s youth.

By age 15, approximately 50 percent of boys and girls have sampled alcohol; by the time they turn 21, 90 percent have done so, according to recent national surveys. Government-commissioned studies also indicate that nearly one-third of the country’s youth begin drinking before age 13, with the peak years of alcohol initiation typically occurring during seventh and eighth grades.

The findings are sobering, and the consequences can be devastating – academic failure, traumatic brain injuries, sexual assault and even death. A landmark report released by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services earlier this year revealed that, in addition to the well-known risks associated with underage drinking, alcohol also has debilitating effects on a teen’s growing brain.

“Too many Americans consider underage drinking a rite of passage to adulthood,” Acting Surgeon General Kenneth Moritsugu said, after releasing his report, a “Call to Action to Prevent and Reduce Underage Drinking,” in March. “Research shows that young people who start drinking before the age of 15 are five times more likely to have alcohol-related problems later in life. New research also indicates that alcohol may harm the developing adolescent brain. The availability of this research provides more reasons than ever before for parents and other adults to protect the health and safety of our nation’s children.”

Although there has been a significant decline in tobacco and illicit drug use among teens in recent years, underage drinking has remained at consistently high levels. The 2005 National Survey on Drug Use and Health estimates there are 11 million underage drinkers in the United States. Nearly 7.2 million are considered binge drinkers, typically meaning they drink more than five drinks on occasion, and more than 2 million are classified as heavy drinkers, the report stated.

Locally, well-publicized incidents in Haddonfield and other communities underscore the fact that the cozy suburbs of South Jersey are in line with the national picture. The most recent New Jersey State Police Uniform Crime Report shows that 159 juveniles were arrested for underage consumption or possession of alcohol in Camden County in 2005 (the most recent statistics available), and the problem seems to be getting worse, not better, according to school and police officials throughout the area.

“We’re finding that the onset of drinking is happening at a younger age than ever before. Middle school kids are involved now, participating in drinking parties and other activities involving alcohol,” said Jennifer DiStefano, student assistance coordinator for the Cherry Hill Public School District. “Unfortunately, we’re also finding that parents are sometimes the ones supplying the alcohol – they think they are being responsible by taking everyone’s keys, for instance. What they don’t seem to get is that – besides the legal liability of supplying those underage with alcohol – children’s overall health is affected at that age by consuming it.”

The Surgeon General’s Call to Action backs that claim. According to the report, recent research shows that underage alcohol use has the potential to trigger long-term biological changes that may alter an adolescent’s development as well as affect their immediate behavior. The resulting adverse outcomes, the report states, may include mental disorders, such as anxiety and depression. Furthermore, new medical research indicates that early alcohol use and binge-like drinking may have detrimental effects on the developing brain, including neurocognitive impairment affecting memory and motor skills, and may damage the adolescent brain’s frontal cortex, which is critical to the development of self-regulation, judgment, reasoning, problem-solving and impulse control.

In addition, the Surgeon General’s report cites animal studies that indicate alcohol consumption before and during adolescence produces long-lasting effects that increase alcohol consumption in adulthood – which, for many researchers, helps explain the known link between early use and later dependence in humans.

The report notes that there is also some indication that adolescents who drink heavily may disrupt their normal growth rate and negatively affect their liver, bone and endocrine development.

“The significance of this Call to Action is in the relatively new medical information it presents regarding the effect alcohol has on the developing body, both mentally and physically,” said Lance Neveling, a Collingswood-based family physician. He noted that it is not often the surgeon general releases such a report – a veritable battle cry against an emerging health crisis.

“Adolescence is a period where there are low instances of disease,” Neveling added. “In adulthood, morbidity and fatality rates go up because alcohol use is introduced. Now we’re seeing more instances of the negative effects of alcohol on a younger age group. It’s quite alarming.”

Neveling said he makes it a point to counsel his young patients on the long-term medical repercussions alcohol use can trigger. “What they see as harmless fun now, I tell them, can affect them for the rest of their lives.”

Besides the subtle ways underage alcohol use can sidetrack the trajectory of a child’s life, there are, of course, dramatic ways as well. Each year, approximately 5,000 people under the age of 21 die as a result of underage drinking, including about 1,900 deaths from motor vehicle crashes, 1,600 as a result of homicides, 300 from suicide, in addition to hundreds from other injuries such as falls, burns and drowning, according to the DHHS.

For all the report’s frightening medical findings, however, it was emerging research suggesting a new evidence-based approach to battling underage alcohol use that inspired the Call to Action. The 94-page document uses its last segment to rally communities across the country to thwart the threat of underage alcohol consumption.

Developed in collaboration with the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, the Call to Action identifies six national goals:

- Foster changes in society that facilitate healthy adolescent development and that help prevent and reduce underage drinking;

- Engage parents, schools, communities, all levels of government, all social systems that interface with youth and youth themselves in a coordinated national effort to prevent and reduce underage drinking and its consequences;

- Promote an understanding of underage alcohol consumption in the context of human development and maturation that takes into account individual adolescent characteristics as well as environmental, ethnic, cultural and gender differences;

- Conduct additional research on adolescent alcohol use and its relationship to development;

- Work to improve public health surveillance on underage drinking and on population-based risk factors for this behavior;

- And work to ensure that policies at all levels are consistent with the national goal of preventing and reducing underage alcohol consumption.

“Alcohol remains the most heavily abused substance by America’s youth,” Moritsugu said. “This Call to Action is attempting to change the culture and attitudes toward drinking in America. We can no longer ignore what alcohol is doing to our children.”

While most school districts provide counseling and education on substance abuse, Haddonfield appears to be the first municipality in the area to tackle the issue head-on with an initiative called Haddonfield Responds. It involved a series of town-hall-style meetings and presentations that resulted in the development of a vigorous offensive aimed at curtailing the problem within its borders, with the help of parents, police officers, school and church officials as well as concerned residents. According to Haddonfield Mayor Tish Colombi, it will likely be a whole new world for middle- and high-school students looking to party during the next school year.

For more information on what Cherry Hill can do as a community to curb underage consumption, check out the suggestions encapsulated in the Surgeon General’s Call to Action by visiting www.surgeongeneral.gov/topics/underagedrinking.