Youth drinking 'scary'

MUNDELEIN — Lake County is on the verge of an "epidemic" of underage drinking, partly because of accommodating or hapless parents, Mundelein Police Chief Raymond Rose warned Tuesday at a town hall meeting at Carmel Catholic High School.

"Kids are showing up at sporting events with alcohol," he said. "Kids are showing up intoxicated in schools ... Arrests are being made in schools for underage drinking."

Rose, who is co-president of the Lake County After School Coalition, was one of the forum hosts.

Young people have been drinking for decades, noted Elizabeth Nelson of Lake County InTouch, another host.

"The new thing is how much and how often they drink," she said. "We know it's a lot more than people did 20 years ago."

Young drinkers today "feel they have to get drunk every weekend," Nelson said. "It's the cool thing. It's not cool if you don't get trashed every weekend."

She estimated 15 to 20 percent of underage drinkers routinely drink to excess. "It's scary," she said.

A trend among teen drinkers in the Barrington area is something called "garage hopping," Nelson said.

"They go from house to house, looking for open garage doors," she said. "If they find one with a fridge, it's usually well-stocked. They take it, go to a park and drink."

More than half of Lake County 12th-graders may drink, a survey taken in 2004 indicates. A total of 56 percent of 420 Lake County seniors questioned in the Illinois Youth Survey said they had drunk alcohol in the past month.

Only 55 percent indicated they perceived any adult disapproval of drinking, while they thought that up to 65 percent of their peers disapproved,

This week, a mother came to the Mundelein Police Department complaining that her 16-year-old daughter shouldn't have been stopped by an officer and berated for drinking, Rose said. The girl, a passenger in a car, "blew a .08 (blood alcohol level)," he said.

"She should have been arrested. Her mother's response to me (was) it's OK. Everybody does it. I don't understand this mentality that drinking's OK," Rose said.

It isn't uncommon today for parents to provide their teens with alcohol, said Rose and others at the town meeting. The idea, they said, is that parents would rather have their kids drink at home than on the highway or someplace else.

The message to children, however, is that drinking is acceptable everywhere, Rose said.

"Parents can't condone this kind of behavior," he said.

Alcohol kills more kids annually than all illegal drugs combined, according to research. More than five million high schoolers binge drink at least once a month, according to the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University.

Four of her classmates at Grant Township High School in Fox Lake have died over the past year in alcohol-related incidents, said Jackie Fagan, 18, a Grant senior.

"There were 200 kids in my graduating class and only 196 made it through alive," Fagan said. "That's not a good statistic."

Nicole Wimberly, 16, of North Chicago, a sophomore at St. Martin de Porres High School in Waukegan, knows alcohol can be deadly. Her friend NaKeisha Miller-Scott, 16, also of North Chicago, died in a crash on Sheridan Road last year. Authorities said alcohol was a factor in the crash.

"Teens drink to be cool," Wimberly said. "But if you try to be cool, you're not cool at all."

At North Chicago High School during her freshman year, Wimberly said she saw students bring alcoholic drinks mixed with Kool-Aid in water bottles to school. "I saw it in grade school, too," she said. "I've seen straight-A students who were beautiful who started drinking and became outcasts."

About 150 students, parents and activists attended the forum. They broke into small groups to discuss the issue and report back with possible solutions.

Among suggestions heard:

• Parents should lock up their liquor

• Make sports available to everyone. "If you're playing, you don't have time to drink," a parent said.

• Ban alcohol sales at gas stations because, as one participant said, "driving and drinking" don't mix.

• Prohibit drinking from water bottles in school classes.

• Prohibit beer and liquor sponsorship of sporting events and other events. "Budweiser sponsors the Golden Gloves!" said an indignant parent.

• Require children to call home from the home phones of the places they visit at night — not from their cell phones.

• Require children to wake parents when they arrive home at night.

• Crack down on "irresponsible marketing" of alcohol on television and other media.

• Parents should not provide teens with alcohol.