The battle starts at home

Judi Vining, coordinator of the Long Beach Medical Center's Coalition to Prevent Underage Drinking, says that the way to combat teenage substance abuse is by fighting it as a community — and that the initial battle starts at home.

The East Rockaway School District invited Vining to speak to parents a week after a state survey revealed that students in the high school were experimenting more with smoking and drinking, on average, than those in other parts of the county and state.

“Underage drinking is not a youth problem,” Vining said. “Anywhere they drink, an adult is involved.”

Vining spoke to a group of 30 parents at the East Rockaway Junior/Senior High School on Jan. 27, outlining strategies parents can use to reduce substance abuse among teens. She said that parents, along with village and school officials, need to form a coalition and brainstorm ideas on how kids are getting alcohol and drugs and where they are using them.

“You need all the players at the table so that everyone can talk about this issue and approach it from different ways,” Vining said. “The reality is, you need to look at the data, where they get it ... it's not good kid, bad kid, it's what kids do. They experiment.”

Vining told parents they should lock up their alcohol, call the state liquor authority to report stores that sell to underage kids, and change the culture in the community, which she said is lenient toward teen drinking. The easy thing to do, she said, is to blame others, like store owners who sell alcohol to teens, but parents need to shoulder some blame as well.

Parents who allow their children to drink in their house because they think it's safer, she said, are contributing to the problem, and that needs to change. “What parents can do is be parents,” Vining said. “Set the rules for your kids — they have enough friends. Kids are going to test the boundaries. It's your job to set them.”