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 11^th 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 21^st 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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Finally, the problem of alcohol abuse, drug abuse and addiction in colleges has become the focus of White House Drug Control strategy. I don’t know if it will work – the War on Drugs hasn’t been any big success – but at least it will probably make parents and college kids aware of the problem. And it will lead to more college kids getting into and alcohol or drug rehab program.

Did you know, for example, that …

• More than one in five kids who drop out of college do so because of something related to alcohol?

• Each year there are nearly 2,000 college students die from alcohol-related incidents?

• Over 600,000 college students are unintentionally injured due to alcohol?

• One in four people aged 18 through 34 binge drink – five drinks or more in one sitting?

• Alcohol is involved in 90% of college rapes?

• 70% of college kids say they had unplanned sex because of alcohol and that 20% did not use protection?

• 22.9% of college students meet the medical definition for alcohol or drug abuse or dependence. The rest of the population averages 8.5%.

• That the number of kids using prescription painkillers like OxyContin and Percocet non-medically is rising dramatically?

• That more than 20% of college kids use Adderall as a study drug or to party?

• That 90% of the students who use Adderall also binge drink and are heavy drinkers?

• That full-time college students who use Adderall are 3 times more likely to use marijuana, 8 times more likely to use cocaine, 8 times more likely to use tranquilizers, and 5 times more likely to use pain relievers?

This is pretty serious stuff – and not at all what parents had in mind when they sent their kids off to college with the money the family had been saving for years.

These kids aren’t just having a good time – they are doing things that are very dangerous.

If you have a son or daughter that’s drinking or taking drugs, don’t take it lightly. It’s easy to think that something bad won’t happen to your kid, or that your kid’s drinking or drug taking won’t get worse – some parents even think that going to college will straighten them out. But, statistically, that’s just not true. Get them through a drug rehab program – they also address alcohol – before they go to college. A good program will help them resist the temptation when college comes around.

And, remember, 25% of college students say that drinking alcohol has adversely affected their performance as a student. Don’t be afraid to take your college kid out of college for a while to sort them out. They have far more chance of getting the education and having the future both they and you envisioned.

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If you have a son or daughter who is a musician, or aspires to be one, you might also have heard from them that drugs and alcohol get their creative juices flowing. The MusiCares MAP Fund, which has save the lives and careers of many musicians by getting them through drug rehab, dispels that idea.

Parents, family members and friends sometimes struggle for years to get the musicians in their lives into drug rehab. As long as a musician thinks their creativity depends on it, the pleas are likely to fall on deaf ears. But if they hear it from another musician – especially musicians who are undeniably successful – it might get through.

The 7th Annual MusiCares MAP Fund Benefit Concert welcomed many of those musicians, and honored Depeche Mode singer Dave Gahan. Gahan, who after years of drug abuse survived a suicide attempt and a heroin overdose, lived to pick up his career and has now been sober for years.

“To be honest,” said Gahan, “If you go down that route, drugs are going to take command over everything you’re doing anyway, and that’s been my experience anyway,” said the U.K. born vocalist. “I went through a period before I got clean where I don’t think I played a record for like two years. I just didn’t care.”

In the end, that’s what drugs can do to you. All you care about are the drugs.

Take it from the many artists who have fought their addictions and won: Steven Tyler, frontman for Aerosmith, Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards, Eric Clapton, Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page, Grace Slick – the list goes on and on.

And, you will notice, many still have illustrious careers.

But hundreds have been lost. Here’s a short list:

• Elvis Presley
• Janis Joplin
• Jimi Hendrix
• Tim Buckley
• Tim Hardin
• Alan Wilson (from Canned Heat)
• Brent Mydland and Ron McKernan (from Grateful Dead)
• Dee Dee Ramone (from The Ramones)
• Gram Parsons (from The Byrds)
• Gregory Herbert (from Blood, Sweat & Tears)
• Hillel Slovak (from Red Hot Chili Peppers)
• John Belushi (from Blues Brothers)]
• John Bonham (from Led Zeppelin)
• John Kahn (from Jerry Garcia Band)
• Jonathan Melvoin (from Smashing Pumpkins)
• Keith Moon (from The Who)
• Mike Bloomfield and Paul Butterfield (from Butterfield Blues Band)

and many, many more. If you check out the full list, just of well-known musicians, their average age when they died was 31.

Ask your musician friends if they want to risk ending their careers at the ripe old age of 31. Or would they rather still be playing to sold-out venues in their 60’s, like Steven Tyler and Eric Clapton?

Use this type of information to get your musician friends or relatives into drug or alcohol rehab. You may save their lives and careers. And, as many of the most successful musicians in the world will attest, it will also make them better musicians.

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