The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) now has hard evidence to support what many prevention specialists and parents have long assumed: Youthful experimentation with alcohol is not a benign rite of passage. It is a risk-filled practice that can have disastrous results. The earlier a young person drinks alcohol, the more likely he or she is to develop a clinically defined alcohol disorder at some point in life.

A $12-million study by NIAAA, released last January, offers scientific validation that young people who began drinking before age 15 are four times more likely to develop alcoholism than those who began drinking at age 21. More than 40 percent of respondents who began drinking before age 15 were classified with alcohol dependence at some time in their lives compared with 24.5 percent for respondents who began drinking at age 17 and about 10 percent for those who began drinking at age 21 and 22. The study also found that the risk of developing alcohol abuse (a maladaptive drinking pattern that repeatedly causes life problems) more than doubled for persons who began drinking before age 15 compared with those who began drinking at age 21. The study, which sampled 43,000 people, documents that the risk for alcohol dependence and alcohol abuse decreases steadily and significantly with each increasing year of age of drinking onset. The NIAAA study has become an important teaching tool for people such as Kay Provine, a prevention specialist at Hazelden and codeveloper of a popular parenting skills program called Roots and Wings. "As soon as the study came out, I made a bar graph to show the correlation between early drinking and alcoholism," said Provine. "It is so effective for parents to see something this concrete. Every year you can delay kids from using alcohol you are buying them time to develop physically, emotionally, spiritually and psychologically."

Parents often don't think their kids listen to them, said Provine. But the annual Minnesota Student Survey of 9th and 12th graders conducted for the Minnesota Department of Children, Families and Learning, consistently shows that young people are listening. "Parental objection is the second most important reason kids give for not using alcohol," said Provine. (The first is "don't like the taste.") "Young people are beginning to drink earlier and earlier now some as young as 9 or 10. And drinking for them is about intoxication, about getting drunk. Each of these facts spells trouble. Parents can consider it a victory of sorts if they can see that their kids delay onset of use, whether it is a matter of months or years. Every day our youth choose not to use improves their chances of not developing alcohol use problems."

Provine and other prevention specialists know that the most effective prevention programs are ongoing, consistent and involve all aspects of a child's life: home, school and community. One program that has been proven to be effective is Project Northland, a community-based prevention program designed to delay the onset of alcohol use, reduce alcohol use for young people who have already tried drinking, and limit the number of alcohol-related problems of young people. Project Northland began at the University of Minnesota in 1990 as a prevention research program funded by the NIAAA. It is the largest randomized community trial ever conducted for the prevention of adolescent alcohol use.

Project Northland, designed to be implemented over a three-year period during grades 6-8, involves students, parents, teachers and the community at large. The prevention curriculum, published by Hazelden, uses comic book characters to help young people talk with their parents about alcohol (sixth grade), deal with peer pressures to use alcohol (seventh grade), and develop community wide changes in alcohol-related programs and policies (eighth grade).

Among 2,400 students followed in northeastern Minnesota, monthly drinking was 20 percent lower and weekly drinking was 30 percent lower for students who engaged in Project Northland activities compared with students in control groups who did not. "Parents have to let their kids know that underage drinking is not okay," said Provine. "They need to talk about family standards and expectations and talk about them again and again. Hopefully, they'll wait to experiment with alcohol. It might not stop the train, but it will put the brakes on." For information about Project Northland, contact Hazelden Educational and Publishing Services at (800) 328-0098.

--Published August 31, 1998