The Students Against Underage Drinking initiative is a program that will aggressively enforce underage drinking laws coupled with an education campaign with direct input with teens focused toward teenagers and young adults. The goal is to reduce the availability of alcohol to teenagers and young adults and to prevent alcohol-related tragic accidents and deaths.

In August, St. Mary’s County Sheriff’s Office held a poster contest in all area public high schools requiring students to create an original poster that included an anti-alcohol message. The contest came to a close on Oct. 1 when Sheriff Timothy Cameron, States Attorney Richard Fritz and Jackie Beckman, Highway Safety Coordinator for St.Mary’s County, judged over 60 entries.

The winning posters will become part of the aggressive marketing campaign to educate school-aged children and young adults about the dangers of alcohol use and the law.

The program stems from a SMCSO partnership with the St. Mary’s County Board of Education, the States Attorney’s Office and Office of Human Services which has implemented the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, model program called Communities Mobilizing for Change on Alcohol.

The CMCA program is on the National Registry of effective programs and practices and is a community-organizing program designed to reduce underage drinking by changing community policies and practices.

CMCA employs a range of social organizing techniques to address legal, institutional, social and health issues designed to reduce alcohol use by underage youth. According to statistics provided by the Center on Alcohol Marketing and Youth 2006 report, an estimated 4.4 million people in the U.S. in 2005 consumed alcohol for the first time. 86.9 percent of those first time alcohol consumers were under the age of 21.

In Maryland, a 2006 survey by the Maryland State Department of Education showed that 16.2 percent of eighth-graders and 31.4 percent of tenth-graders has used alcohol. This same survey showed that alcohol use was two times greater than marijuana in the same age groups.

In St. Mary’s, the number of young driver alcohol/drug crashes increased 57 percent during the four year span between 2000 and 2004. In assessment and treatment for substance abuse, Walden/Sierra finds alcohol to be the most reported drug used among clients. St. Mary’s County Alliance for Alcohol and Drug Abuse Prevention reports young drivers between 16 and 20 years of age account for 15 percent of impaired driving crashes.

In 2008, the SMCSO issued 90 alcohol citations to 18 to 20 year-old young adults and 52 to children under the age of 18. Of the 90 young adult citations, 68 were cited for operating a motor vehicle while impaired.

The Governor's Office of Crime Control and Prevention funded this program under grant number EUDL-2008-1007.  All points of view in this document are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the official position of any State or Federal agency.