Mom says
teen-agers drink
heavily at parties

A state official says
the number of isle teens
who drink daily is
'very serious'

By Lori Tighe
Star-Bulletin

Linda Elliott looked in her toilet bowl and saw something she had never seen before: crystals.

She learned later that the crystals on the bowl's surface occurred from her son's alcohol-saturated urine. Brian, 16, who played football, baseball and basketball, attended parties and drank heavily every weekend.

"I mean every weekend," Elliott said.

That discovery turned Elliott into a party crasher. She formed the Parent Party Patrol, which busts teen parties with alcohol and educates parents about teen alcohol prevention.

"Parties have changed since parents were teens," Elliott told about 200 people at a conference on teen-age alcoholism, "Ho'Akamai Alcohol and Young People: A Community Response," at the state Capitol auditorium yesterday. "I realized my community was trying to kill my son. Parents left on weekends with their kids home alone to have parties and drink."

The rate of kids drinking alcohol in Hawaii is higher than the rest of the nation, said Elaine Wilson, director of the state Alcohol and Drug Abuse Division.

"The number of 13- and 14-year-olds in Hawaii drinking daily is very serious," Wilson said. "What's become clear to us: We need to get heavily into alcohol prevention."

The number of Hawaii students in sixth, eighth, 10th and 12th grades that are drinking routinely has skyrocketed since 1993: Sixth-graders, in particular, increased five times from 1993 to 1996 and almost half of 12th-graders drink alcohol routinely.

"One thing we think happened in 1993, our money for prevention was reduced. The big message was drugs because people were so scared about drugs. The alcohol message got lost," Wilson said.

Of 1,200 kids in state treatment a year, half are in for alcohol abuse, Wilson said. "Parents view alcohol with relief compared to drug use," she said. "But they shouldn't."

Statistics show that the younger kids are when they begin to drink, the higher their chances of becoming an adult alcoholic. And when kids drink, accidents happen, including car collisions, swimming pool drownings, unprotected sex and sexual assaults.

"Some parents think underage drinking is OK. It's not OK, it's illegal," Elliott said.

After her son, Brian, told Elliott she was being overprotective, she interviewed 200 teens at Burger Kings, bowling alleys and malls in her hometown of Tacoma, Wash., to find out their drinking habits. What she learned, frightened her: 190 of the teens said weapons were at the weekend parties they attended.

Elliott assembled a panel consisting of a police officer, a liquor board member, an emergency room nurse and an insurance attorney to supply parents with more information about teen alcoholism.

"We offer tools and solutions to parents. I remind these parents they can be sued and arrested for promoting underage drinking at unchaperoned parties at their home," Elliott said. She recruited the National Guard, who volunteers to fly a helicopter over neighborhoods to report teen home parties with alcohol, and at large all-night parties in secluded places with excessive drinking.

"I told the National Guard, I need you. I also recruited police and sheriff departments and conducted stings: We crashed parties. We had some adults arrested. It's unacceptable and it's got to stop." she said.