Youth Deliver Underage Drinking Wake-Up Call

View Event Details

ADAPT, Inc.
Washington Parish, Louisiana

Introduction
“Let’s face it, a lot of people think of this as a party state,” says Charlette Fornea, Executive Director of ADAPT, Inc., a nonprofit organization providing substance abuse and mental health services to the Bogalusa-Washington Parish area of Louisiana. ADAPT is an acronym for All Deserve Advocacy, Prevention, & Treatment. Changing underage drinking norms for children and adolescents is an ADAPT, Inc. objective for this area.

As shown in the chart below, rates of alcohol use by local 12th-grade students fall between those for their peers at the national and state levels, according to the 2012 Louisiana Caring Communities Youth Survey.

Louisiana has no social host law. Clearly, persuading young people to avoid alcohol is an important benchmark for prevention efforts, but getting adults to recognize underage drinking as a serious community problem is essential to changing norms and implementing evidence-based prevention methods. ADAPT’s approach, which involves having young people educate grownups and gaining the support of decisionmakers, meets both objectives.

Event Description
ADAPT held its April 28, 2014, Town Hall Meeting at the Washington Parish Courthouse in Franklington. This location helped ADAPT and its Drug Education for Youth (DEFY) team (also known as Washington Parish Youth Against Drugs) bring parish officials to the table to talk about local youth substance abuse. The evening’s purpose was to jolt decisionmakers and parents into recognizing underage drinking and other substance abuse as serious public health concerns. The program was also meant to promote the concept of evidence-based environmental prevention. With tobacco prevention already a community issue, the DEFY young people assembled a PowerPoint presentation of recent data about drinking and smoking among their peers in Louisiana and in the parish. The DEFY teens presented the data at the Town Hall Meeting and responded to questions and comments from participating county decisionmakers and parents. A photo of the Washington Parish DEFY team members who presented at the Town Hall Meeting is below.

Measures of Success
Seven members of the Washington Parish Council attended the Town Hall Meeting and took note of the data presented. Several of these council members voiced surprise and concern about the level of underage drinking in their communities and expressed a newfound interest in prevention. To ADAPT staff, their response constituted a major step toward implementation of new local policies to limit youth access to alcohol and tobacco. Many area parents were in attendance as well; several asked to be added to the ADAPT e-mail list. ADAPT also received numerous requests for their “alcohol-free zone” signs, created for local Mardi Gras activities. In addition, ADAPT received several requests from area faith leaders for copies of the PowerPoint presentation and other materials about underage drinking for use in church lessons and activities. ADAPT views faith leaders as key communicators to their constituents.

Next Steps
ADAPT will continue training and coordinating DEFY/Washington Parish Youth Against Drugs members as prevention spokespersons to educate community members about underage drinking/substance abuse prevention. Stepped-up ADAPT promotion of Mardi Gras alcohol-free zones will be pursued, both to make these events safer and to increase public awareness. In addition, the organization feels prepared to begin working with the parish council and other community leaders on implementation of a possible local social host ordinance, use of compliance checks, and other environmental prevention measures.

Contact
Charlette Fornea
cfornea_lpc@yahoo.com

Return to Success Stories