A Plea to Wisconsin Parents – Consider Alcohol Rehab
Week after week I see stories about someone dying in Wisconsin in some way that is connected to alcohol abuse. Most of them are young. Wisconsin has done several things to try to reduce the alcohol abuse, but it just doesn’t seem to be working. It seems that the next step might have to be something to enlighten parents so they get into alcohol rehab themselves and stop promoting the alcohol culture.
Just in the last couple of months there have been several disasters. A 58-year-old guy was arrested for the 11th time for drunk driving! Almost hit a school bus with a bunch of kids in it. Fortunately, he only hit a mailbox. But he still kept driving and was later found unconscious in his car.
Another death, a student celebrating his 21st birthday, got plastered and drowned in the Wisconsin river.
Then three young men who were driving drunk were killed when their truck crashed and caught fire.
Wisconsin citizens have a reputation of being very tolerant about alcohol – in fact, it is generally approved of. The State is considered to be an alcohol culture.
Laws have been changed: There are now stiffer penalties for repeat drunk drivers, there have been public health campaigns intended to educate people on the dangers of young people drinking, and just last week a new law was passed in the city of Schofield that if someone hosts a social gathering where there is underage drinking the host can be fined up to $5,000. Schofield is the fifth community to pass a similar law.
It seems the attention is being put on the wrong thing – young people instead of adults. After all, it wasn’t the students who recently died who created the alcohol culture – it was created by his parents. Well, maybe not HIS parents, but parents nevertheless.
You can’t expect that educating a teenager about the dangers of drinking is going to do much when he sees so many of the adults around him drinking on a regular basis and to excess.
Statistics show that if parents educate their kids about alcohol there’s a 50 percent less chance of the kids drinking. But if the parents drink themselves, it’s unlikely that they’re going to tell their kids not to. And if they did educate their kids about how bad drinking can be, but are drinking themselves, the kids aren’t likely to listen.
To change things in Wisconsin, and keep Wisconsin’s young people alive, the adults are going to have to change first. And that might well take a good alcohol rehab program.
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