Town hall meetings aimed at raising awareness for parents, community
By: Vanessa S. Holt
BORDENTOWN CITY If slogans like "Just say no" and "Don’t drink and drive" don’t sway you, perhaps stories like these will.
There’s the 21-year-old who flipped his car eight times at 95 mph while he was still a teenager, killing his best friend. After he served a sentence for vehicular homicide he started drinking again and crashed a motorcycle.
Or there’s the story of a woman whose son was one of four who died in a car that hit a tree on Route 29 on a rainy night after a night of partying. A fifth person, the lone survivor, awoke to find himself trapped by the bodies of two of his best friends.
Stories like these have the most impact when they are told by the survivors, which is one reason that the Bordentown Regional School District invited speakers from Prevention Plus of Burlington County, BRAD (Bordentown Residents Against Drugs), and DARE (Drug Abuse Resistance Education) to talk to parents and community members on Monday night.
The "town hall meeting," held in the MacFarland Junior School library, was one of many across the country this spring as part of an effort started by the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services administration, and the U.S. Department of Health to curb underage alcohol abuse.
The legal drinking age is still 21, but the average age most people take their first drink is closer to 12. But statistics by themselves don’t usually keep people from starting. The question is, what does stop kids from taking that first drink? And what could keep them from the binge drinking that an estimated one-third of teenagers have indulged in, in the past 30 days in this state alone, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Targeting the problem of underage drinking has to start at the community level, said Nell Geiger, substance awareness coordinator at the school.
Part of the problem, said Bordentown Regional School District Superintendent John Polomano, is that people don’t consider alcohol to be a drug, but it is generally the most abused drug in any community.
Through a series of guest speakers and a video presentation, several dozen parents and members of the community heard some of the firsthand stories of alcohol abuse and its effects.
"I can’t describe the remorse I have," said Eric Schller, the speaker whose drunk driving killed his best friend in that first example. He said he talks about his experiences to warn others about the effects of heavy drinking.
"Alcohol is cunning, baffling and powerful," said Anne Elliott, the mother of one of the five boys in the Route 29 car crash.
Although this was the first town hall style meeting held at the school, organizers said there would be more, as community involvement is one of the key elements in preventing underage alcohol abuse. With so many commercials and alcohol company endorsements one parent used an example of a Little League team in her area that was sponsored by a liquor store and so many images on TV and movies of keg parties and girls and guys "going wild," binge drinking and alcoholism seem to be reaching epidemic proportions, said Connie Schmidt, a speaker from Prevention Plus.
"What we do as adults definitely affects kids," she said, going over statistics like the average age of first alcohol use in New Jersey, which is just under the age of 12.
"What could your parents have done to help you?" an audience asked Mr. Schller during a question and answer session. Many parents, he said, go into denial and believe their children’s problems will "work themselves out," he said. "I would want to be more informed of the dangers (of alcohol)," he said. But it is important, he said, for parents or other authority figures to talk to young people as equals, eye to eye.