Rather than waiting for a high profile, tragic incident to occur in the community to start addressing underage alcohol issues, the Roseville, Falcon Heights, Lauderdale and Little Canada Mayor's Commission Against Drugs meets monthly to develop and implement community strategies to reduce underage access to alcohol. The Commission also addresses developmental assets and other chemical health and safety issues that affect the lives of young people and the community.

The commission is made up of collaborators who take equal ownership in developing and implementing solutions that promote a chemically healthy community and environment. These collaborators include youth, parents, three law enforcement agencies, state and local elected officials, school personnel, faith community, county agencies, nonprofits, business and parks and recreation. This broad-based partnership enables the Commission to tackle sensitive issues more effectively than is possible individually.

The Commission has addressed chemical health and youth issues for over eight years. This group is keenly aware that during adolescence, young people begin to make initial choices about their involvement in potentially dangerous behaviors, alcohol use being one of them. When young people drink alcohol, negative health and social consequences greatly increase and not only affect the young person, but also impact the safety and health of the community.

Counter to conventional wisdom, the majority of those who experience acute alcohol-related problems such as car crashes, chronic disease, homicide, suicide, assaults, sexually transmitted diseases and unintended pregnancies, are light, moderate or binge drinkers, who are not addicted to alcohol (Alcohol Use in Minnesota: Extent and Cost, 1996). It's not the kids on the extreme ends of the "alcohol use and nonuse continuum" that create the largest public health problem. Rather, it's the large population of kids that fall in the middle. These are the young people we often label the "good kids." Addressing this population through environmental strategies is one of the most effective and efficient ways to significantly reduce the negative and tragic consequences that occur with underage alcohol use.

The Mayor's Commission understands that the community environment greatly determines how much alcohol is consumed by the community's young people. Dr. Wagenaar's research out of the University of Minnesota demonstrates that the degree to which young people use alcohol is dependent upon it's availability (Wagenaar, 1993). Youth are able to obtain alcohol with ease by having older friends purchase for them, buying from stores that sell to minors, or asking other adults to buy for them (US Department of Education, 1993). Bottom line...kids have easy access to alcohol and almost all underage drinkers get their alcohol from adult sources (Communities Mobilizing for Change on Alcohol, 1995).

So instead of the Commission only asking the traditional question of, "How do we stop young people from drinking alcohol?", we now ask, "How do we, as a community, stop adults from providing alcohol to our young people¼" This shift in thinking and questioning sheds a new light on the irony of underage drinking. Although it appears to be a youth problem, in actuality, it is largely influenced by adults. Adults provide, produce, promote and profit from alcohol. Children don't. As a result, the underage drinking problem is an intergenerational problem that needs to be solved inter-generationally in the community, by both youth and adults.

Realizing that this problem can't be solved solely locally, and knowing how mobile kids are, the Mayor's Commission started joining forces with other communities around the state. These communities began working together and taking action on a statewide level to reduce the two major sources of alcohol for kids: commercial outlets-liquor stores, convenience stores, bars and restaurants, and social source-friends, strangers, parties and parents.

We need to take what we have learned from participating in community coalitions and implement it on a statewide level. Broadbase community collaboration and support make public health policies and initiatives happen that otherwise would not be feasible. Minnesota Join Together, a grass-roots community based initiative, is helping to create the statewide network that is needed. It enables people, like you and me, who are concerned, to join together to create broadbase support for healthy statewide alcohol policy. This policy will help protect the health and safety of our young people, as well as our communities. As adults, we need to be sure that all our kids have access to their future-not access to alcohol.

For more information, contact Jeff Nachbar at jnachbar@miph.org or 612-427-5310.