blaming youth

What's to blame for America's high levels of drug and alcohol abuse? Officials and prominent organizations are rushing to embrace a politically expedient insanity: ANY drinking or drug use before age 21 is the CAUSE of later drug and alcohol addiction, mental problems, and other difficulties among adults.

The absurdity of this notion can be observed directly: if drinking before age 21 caused grownup alcoholism and dysfunction, every adult in Portugal, Spain, and Greece would be brain-damaged alcoholics. In those countries, alcohol drinking by children and teens is widespread, often daily. Yet, objective measures show rates of alcoholism and drunken problems in these and similar Mediterranean tier cultures are among the lowest in the world. Of course, these countries have strong social controls and family settings that moderate drinking by adults and youths alike.

In the United States, Baby Boomers--who actually had very low rates of drug and alcohol use as teenagers in the late 1950s and 1960s (82% graduating in 1973 had never used an illegal drug)--developed terrible rates of drug abuse in later years. Consistently, high school classes with higher rates of drug use had lower rates of drug abuse manifest by overdose deaths, crime, and other ills.

But acting US Surgeon General Kenneth Moritsugu, Office of Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) director John Walters, Partnership for a Drug-Free America CEO Steven Parsierb, and Joseph Califano of the Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA) have all landed on a handy scapegoat: if all youth could be dissuaded or forcibly prevented from ever using drugs or drinking alcohol before age 21, drinking and drug abuse would disappear from American society--or so they imply. The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) has issued a series of ludicrous "studies" claiming that drinking or drug use before age 21 causes troubles later more than drinking or drug use after that age--if, as these studies do, histories of family and parent drug and alcohol abuse, family violence and child abuse, family instability and breakup, and mental illness are ignored.

Note how convenient this attitude is for its holders: not only can adults continue to party while telling teens to abstain for "developmental" reasons, officials can avoid the thorny, politically hazardous issues of adult alcohol and drug abuse--which is more rampant in America than in any other Western nation. Officials can continue to deny rising middle-aged alcohol problems (alcohol-related deaths among ages 45-64 are up from 2,976 in 1994 to 4,397 in 2004) just as they have denied the skyrocketing middle-aged drug crisis (see sources).

Moritsugu’s claim that “underage drinking is dangerous” misses a crucial point: drinking by youths is dangerous only in societies, such as ours, that deny and tolerate dangerous alcohol use by grownups. American adults, all the way into their 50s, handle alcohol more dangerously than adults in any other Western culture--with drunken driving death rates twice as high as those found even in other car cultures such as Australia and Canada--and American middle-aged drunken driving and alcohol overdose rates many times higher than among high schoolers (see --). officials and media reports condemn 2006 National Household Survey findings that 5.7 million teens under age 20 are “binge drinkers” (down five or more drinks on one or more occasions in the past month) but fail to note the same survey found 11.4 million binge drinkers ages 30-39, 10.9 million ages 40-49, and 7.0 million ages 50-59 It's no coincidence that the US has the Western world's most lenient laws governing adult alcohol use and the harshest aimed at teenagers. Moritsugu and others now suggest that 500,000 alcohol possession arrests every year aren't enough; teens have to be cracked down on even more.

Authorities' easy "blame youths for adult problems" stance incorporates two dangerous trends: (a) growing official refusal to hold adults responsible for their behaviors, and (b) decreasing concern for youths who suffer from adults' rising misconduct.

Check the websites, press statements, and advertisements of ONDCP, the Partnership, SAMHSA, the Surgeon General, CASA, and the Ad Council, among others. You will find dozens of public announcements, statements, and links for parents with teens who drink or use drugs, but none for the estimated 26 million children and teens whose parents have drinking/drug problems. If you navigate through the sites, you eventually will find an ONDCP poster (in which EMBARRASSED, ANGRY, ASHAMED appear in huge letters over a teenagers' face, followed by tiny letters adding "If you’re dealing with parents who have a drug or alcohol problem it isn’t easy...") and, in the lower corner of another page on the Freevibe site referred to by ONDCP (on which youths will find dozens more messages on their own drinking and drug taking), a link for youths with parental drug/alcohol problems. Most sites don't even have that, and none have any prominent statements or advertisements on the subject. Graphic evidence, indeed, of how little official America cares about the millions of children and teens suffering from addicted, often violent, parents and families.