Let's act before it's too late

A town hall meeting was called by a concerned group for the benefit of a community, namely Seymour. This community has approximately 20,000 residents who should have been interested in the message of this town hall meeting. I was one of those who was interested in this event, specifically how many of these community folks would turn out.

The subject of this meeting was teenage alcohol usage, a subject that this community has chosen to stick their heads into the sand and ignore. One has to assume the reason why it is such a hot topic is because this community is known as a drinking community, but so are most communities in the United States.

This meeting was called and rather heavily advertised several times in the local newspapers. They planned for it to be held in a place where several could be accommodated. In fact there could have been seating capacity for hundreds.

And the meeting happened. Six different community representatives representing the law, the prosecution, the judges, the probation, the treatment services and the local school served as a discussion panel. Five of them gave a dissertation of their duties, including policies and procedures as they relate to the law of our land and specifically as it relates to teenage involvement. The school representative shared the findings of a 2007 drug survey conducted in the local high school, the same survey which is taken every two years.

The message heard from these six representatives should have been enough to have literally scared every citizen of this community. However only eight or nine parents showed up for the meeting and in all probability none of them had any real reason for being there.

The question I have to ask - the same question I have been asking for 35 years, is where were the other 19,292 community folks? This number (19,292 ) is evidently those who must think (believe) that we have no problems in our community with alcohol usage by our kids. I say kids because it is not just a teenage problem when we know for a fact that many who are younger than teenagers are also using and many times abusing.

Alcohol - just another drink? For many adults who stop on the way home from work to have one or two. For many adults the drink of choice - always available in the home. For social drinkers participating in social affairs at family gatherings, community wedding receptions, parties, club gatherings and organization gatherings. For many others the ruination of their lives, those who become alcoholics and eventually die as a result of alcohol's damaging effects.

Alcohol - for our teenagers and children? The life of the party. Everybody else is doing it. It won't hurt me, after all I can quit any time I want to. I won't drive and drink, so it is OK. My parents drink, why can't I? Dad says it is OK if I drink at the wedding. Where is the next party? Oh, yes, I'll be there.

They call it a disease of the brain; I call it a disease of choice, a disease of our culture, a disease of human integrity. They say many inherit the trait, passed from gene to gene, and they are probably right. These they call alcoholics. I call them people with no willpower. It would seem if I knew that something was going to kill me that I would run far away from it. But as we all know this is many times not the case, instead we run directly to it.

For young people whose brain is still growing and maturing, alcohol will mess them up. It will kill many brain cells before they have a chance to mature. It will turn them into alcoholics long before their time of maturity. It will result in many becoming adult social drinkers who generally drink too many at one time with sometimes devastating results with extremes of car accidents all the way to personal violence. It will take them through high school and on into college or into the workplace with a friend (alcohol) that brings them a sense of power and peace and eventually self-destruction. But that's OK if they drink in a controlled situation (home), at least they won't be out doing drugs and getting into trouble.

Have you ever watched an alcoholic drink themselves to death? It isn't a pretty sight. It is happening every day right here in our community. But there are many who do not die but wind up in prison as a result of some alcohol-related offense. But here they are safe, here they won't hurt anyone. The only kicker is that it is costing us taxpayers about $35,000 a year to keep each of them incarcerated. But at least we are all safe - they aren't out on the roads driving.

A town hall meeting to address the issues of teenage drinking - where do we go to from here? Does anyone really care? Are there really any concerns. Is it really true that just a few people (eight parents, five youth, six panel members and about 12-15 other concerned council members) are the only ones that are concerned? Again where were the other some 19,000 community members? Is it really only about teen-agers. What about the little kids who also live in our community? And better still what about all the role models - those that call themselves adults (parents, grandparents, educators, community provid-ers, law officers, judicial people, business leaders, and most of all the church people and all the rest).

Where do we go from here? You be the judge. The decision is all up to you, those of you that really care about the future of our young people and the future of our community. The surveys say that the involvement is getting worse. They real question just may be - how much time do we have before it's too late?

Dick Rumph
Seymour, Ind.