Ads chide parents on youth alcohol use

SAN RAFAEL, Calif. -- When it comes to indulging, moneyed teenagers living in the affluent communities near California's wine country have little trouble getting what they want: designer clothes, the latest electronics, and the other accessories to trendy living.

But officials are alarmed at the ease with which Marin County teenagers are getting beer and other alcoholic beverages. A recent survey suggested that 54 percent of Marin County's teenagers consume alcohol, a statistic 10 points higher than California's already soaring rate and nearly double the national rate.

The front line is shifting in the battle against underage drinking. In October, the Office of National Drug Control Policy began airing television commercials that chide parents for knowingly or unwittingly contributing to underage drinking.

''Young people drink to get drunk," states one of the ads running in Marin County. ''Stop kidding yourself. Don't give alcohol to teens."

The adult-oriented strategy is resonating across the country, after years of focusing the battle directly at the offenders.

Last month, the US Department of Health and Human Services, which considers underage drinking a national health concern, launched public service announcements of its own, as part of a nationwide antidrinking campaign targeted at parents.

''Adult attitudes have to be changed," said Richard J. Bonnie, a University of Virginia law professor and chairman of a committee convened two years ago by the National Research Council to study underage drinking.

''Many adults actually think they're doing a good thing when they buy alcohol and serve it in their home, on the assumption that it would be safer," Bonnie said.

The committee urged aggressive strategies to combat an issue overshadowed for years by the war on illicit drugs and the campaign against cigarettes, despite more widespread abuse of alcohol by teenagers, according to the research council's report.

Key among the committee's recommendations was a hard-hitting media campaign targeted squarely at parents.

One of the Health and Human Services Department's ads features a boy, looking no older than 10, introducing himself to an alcoholics' support group. By the time his parents begin talking to him about alcohol, he says, it will be too late. ''By then, I'll already be in some trouble," the child says. ''The thing is, my parents won't even see it coming."

In recent years, underage drinking has become a national cause. The problem accounts for a fifth of sales in the $116 billion alcohol industry, according to a study published in 2003 by the Journal of the American Medical Association.

In a survey conducted last spring, the American Medical Association found that a fourth of teenagers get alcohol from a parent. A quarter of the teenagers, according to the survey, also said they recently attended parties where minors drank in the presence of parents.

The medical association also found that a quarter of the parents it surveyed said teenagers should be allowed to drink at home if a parent is present. A fourth of the parents, all with children between 12 and 20, admitted to allowing their children to do so.

The Beer Institute, the Washington-based trade association for the country's brewing industry, declined to comment on the statistics. Many surveys indicate that beer is the most popular alcoholic drink for teenagers.

Children who drink alcohol run the risk of stunting brain development and are more likely to become alcoholics, abuse other drugs, and get into scrapes with the law, according to health researchers and law enforcement officials. Alcohol is also a factor in sexual assaults and other violence, researchers and officials say.

The ads are meant to be ''a wake-up call to parents who don't know how dangerous alcohol is to their children," said Gary Najarian, a health planner for Marin County's Division of Alcohol, Drug, and Tobacco Programs and former director of Connecticut's Coalition to Stop Underage Drinking.

The more vigorous efforts to educate parents are not meant to discount other programs, said Najarian, adding that the campaign is essential to counter the barrage of beer commercials, billboards, and well-placed inducements in movies.

Smoking and drug use have declined among the country's youth, but ''what we're finding is that alcohol has not budged, so we're trying to find a way to budge it," said Leah Young, a spokeswoman for the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, an agency of the US Department of Health and Human Services.

''Many adults see drinking as a rite of passage," Young said. ''We are trying to change attitudes, in the same way that attitudes have changed about tobacco."

The alcohol industry says it has long advocated parental responsibility.

''Anheuser-Busch has long supported the role of parents in preventing underage drinking," John Kaestner, vice president of consumer affairs for the company, wrote in an e-mail statement.

In the past two decades, the Beer Institute says, the industry has spent $500 million to fight underage drinking, but alcohol-education activists express skepticism about the efforts.

''The alcohol industry has embraced this campaign because it's the parents who get the blame," said Laurie Lieber, a spokeswoman for the Marin Institute, an alcohol industry watchdog based in Marin County.

While all states forbid furnishing alcohol to those under 21, only six states -- Arizona, Kansas, Michigan, Alabama, Florida, and New Hampshire -- have laws that make property owners criminally responsible.