By:Brian Shappell
The Cranbury Municipal Alliance on Drug Abuse and Alcoholism and the Cranbury School Parent Teacher Organization have teamed up for their first community program devoted to alcoholism.
The program, titled “Teens, Parents, Drinking and the Law,” will be held at 8 p.m. Monday in the Cranbury School Cafeteria. The program will inform parents of the legal and moral implications of alcohol use among underage drinkers as well as clear up misconceptions.
“There is clearly a lot of confusion in public perception of what is legal and what isn’t,” said Becky Beauregard, chairwoman of the municipal alliance. “This program will attempt to inform parents what the law says.”
The program will be run by three guest speakers, Judge Amy Chambers, a New Jersey Superior Court judge; Cranbury Police Sgt. Ed Kahler; and Gary Deblasio, executive director of Corner House, a Princeton-based counseling center that tackles problems of teens, parents and substance abuse.
Among the topics covered at the meeting will be teen drinking, parents providing alcohol for their teens, parties thrown at homes when parents are away and incidents where parents can be held accountable for teen drinking.
“This is designed to make parents aware that it’s not a trivial issue, it’s far-reaching,” Sgt. Kahler said.
The Cranbury Municipal Alliance was formed in 1990 and is made up of residents, police, parents of students and Board of Education members. The committee’s focus is on prevention education and programming. Ms. Beauregard said the program is important because it will steer future programming on social issues such as alcoholism and drug abuse. She also said it is imperative for parents to come out to “break through the denial,” associated with such issues.
“We would like to identify the problems in the community so we can better tailor programs that are responsive to the real needs of the community,” Ms. Beauregard said.
Sgt. Kahler has years of experience behind him on the issue of alcohol and drug abuse, issues he said go hand-in-hand. Sgt. Kahler has been talking to students at the Cranbury School on the issue for a decade through the Drug Abuse Prevention Program, which he started.
“It’s important to get to the young people in sixth-, seventh- and eighth-grade to tell them the truth about what alcohol and drugs can do,” he said.
Sgt. Kahler said he is curious to see how many people attend what the alliance and PTO believe is an extremely important event.
“If it isn’t a strong turnout, I’ll know we have a lot of work to do letting people know that drugs and alcohol are a problem,” he said. “It’s everywhere; you can’t get away from it.
