Celebration
Well, tomorrow night is New Year’s Eve and I personally could care less. Oh, sure, years ago in my youth it seemed like a lot of fun going out and getting sloshed. We’d get drunk and actually drive home (or somewhere else). How I never wound up killing someone or killing myself is beyond me.
And now I have no desire to drink. Maybe it’s cause I’m 61 years old and have had some gout attacks recently. Whatever the reason, I’m not into it. Heck, I don’t even know if I’ll make it to see the ball come down in Times Square. Or is it an apple? I forget.
Putting my personal thoughts aside, however, I just read a disturbing statistic. It seems that the number of emergency department visits involving underage drinkers jumped by more than 250 percent on New Year’s Day two years ago. Yep, the U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration found that there were an estimated 1,980 emergency visits on Jan. 1, 2009 that had something to do with underage drinking. The national average for such visits during the year as a whole was 546 per day.
The study also found that the number of admissions on New Year’s Day linked to underage drinking was 191 percent higher than on Memo
Underage Drinking
rial Day and 110 percent higher than on the Fourth of July.
Are you reading this, parents?
The bottom line is that parents, coaches, teachers and other role models need to do everything they can to positively influence young people, including talking with them early and often about the many health dangers underage drinking poses to their physical and emotional health and well-being. This cannot just be swept under a rug.
If you need more information about this issue, go to the website for the U.S. National Institute on Alcohol Abuse.
You owe it to your kids.
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