Statistics from other states show that if you reduce the availability of alcohol, you get fewer alcohol law violations like driving under the influence, as well a few incidents of risky sexual behavior and violence.

What does the new law (AB 63) change? Previously, gas stations, liquor stores and other establishments that offer alcohol for sale, were allowed to sell beer from 8 in the morning until midnight, and liquor from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. The new law allows these places to start selling all alcohol at 6 in the morning.

Apparently, the individuals in the government of Wisconsin are also caught up in the alcohol culture – although I doubt they’d be likely to hang out with the people who would show up at a gas station to buy booze at 6 a.m. Maybe it would be a good idea to force them to hang out with those people for a while. Then they can make a decision based on the effect their laws are actually going to have. Maybe they should spend a little time with the mothers, fathers, children, husbands and wives of these people. See what their lives are like. And then they can decide whether they want to facilitate that.

In an article in hrtnews.com, the writer said “It tells our youth the earlier in life you can begin consuming alcohol, the better.” Hey, it’s not just earlier in life, it’s also earlier in the day. Start drinking early, in every way.

What does this mean for parents and others who are concerned about drinking? That you have an even more uphill battle than you had before.

But no matter how many laws are passed, the best way to curb alcohol addiction and abuse is to educate your children about the dangers of alcohol and help them create a life that they want to live without getting drunk. In the end, it’s always up to the parents and the kids. But back up from schools, the government and other outside influences certainly help.

In addition to making sure your kids understand what drugs can do to them, it’s also important to make them aware of how drinking and taking drugs affects others.

For example, you could make your kids aware of the following:

• The tax collected by the government on alcohol sales is about $18 billion per year, but the cost of healthcare, lost productivity and justice system expenses add up to about $180 billion – 10 times as much. Let your kids know that that other $162 billion comes directly from your pocket, and will come directly from his or her pocket once they’re also paying taxes.
• Partially as a result of people getting sick due to drugs and alcohol, healthcare costs are so high that millions of people in America can’t afford to go to a doctor or to buy health insurance. It’s hard to pay for these things even for someone who makes a better than average income. But for many people, it comes down to eating and paying rent OR paying for the doctor or having health insurance. Give them examples of how much you have to pay. And how much they’ll have to pay as they get older.
• The same is true for auto insurance. If there weren’t so many people on the road drinking and driving, or driving while on drugs, it wouldn’t be necessary to charge so much for auto insurance. That also effects you, the parents, and will effect them as they get older.
• Tens of thousands of people in almost every state go into drug rehab and alcohol rehab every year. Most of these services are ‘free’ to the people getting helped, but are paid for by the taxpayer, which will one day include your son or daughter.  And the people who get help never have to repay anything for the services they receive, so no one who footed the bill for them will ever get any of that money back.  Helping is great, but those people did make the decision to drink or take drugs, and to drink too much, or to drive while under the influence of drugs or alcohol, and they may even have damaged cars, other property, their passengers, the people in the other cars – someone may even have died or been crippled for life. It might be appropriate that, once the alcoholic or drug addict is doing better, they repay for the damage they caused and the help they got.

The point is – individuals may have the right to do whatever they want regarding drugs and alcohol, but they do not have the right to infringe on and damage the lives of others. They will agree, I’m sure, that they also don’t want to harm others. But, if you’re drinking too much (by which I mean more than the occasional social drink) or taking drugs, there’s really no way you can avoid negatively effecting someone else – even if it’s just your parents worrying about you.

If kids understand this, it will go a long way to helping them say no to drugs and alcohol, and it could make them a better, more socially responsible person in the process.

Some phones are ringing off the hook – people look at what happened to Amy and know they have to do something about themselves if they want to make sure the same doesn’t happen to them.

I believe this indicates some sort of change in the alcohol/drug climate. In years past, kids knew that celebrated musicians and artists took drugs, and that drugs killed them. Parents, in an effort to discourage their kids from taking drugs, would use these celebrities as examples – especially those the kids admired and wanted to emulate.

However, many kids had the viewpoint that what made these celebrity musicians great was the drugs. And the kids wanted to be great, too, so they also wanted to take drugs.

In some cases, the fact that those musicians were now dead didn’t seem to get through. Maybe the fact that they were young, still feeling invincible, and hadn’t had much experience with death in their family or with friends, made the death part of the situation somewhat unreal to them. As other kinds of danger are to many young people.

If Amy Winehouse’s death causes more people to seek out an alcohol or drug rehab program that can straighten them out, she can add that to her legacy.

Still, she’s gone. And her death is a lesson to parents all over the world – don’t let the same thing happen to your kids.

Why are people addicted to drugs? There’s a list – but, surprisingly, it’s not too long.

• Poverty
• Frustration and worry in life
• Emotional trauma caused by association with those who don’t have our best interests at heart
• Low self-esteem and feeling like a failure in some way or other
• Physical dependency on prescription drugs
• Lack of education and the resulting inability to get ahead in life
• Feeling a lack of purpose in life, or having that purpose thwarted
• Growing up in an environment where illicit drugs and alcohol are accepted
• Growing up in an environment where prescription drugs are considered to be a remedy to life’s problems
• Taking dangerous drugs for kicks and becoming addicted

There may be more, but they would probably be versions of the above.

What we lack – on a broad scale – is the ability or wherewithal to do something about those problems.

Among those listed above, however, is one item that, if it can be resolved, may lead to a resolution of many of the other problems. And that item is feeling a lack of purpose in life.

When an individual has a purpose in life, and that purpose is constructive, and it is THEIR purpose, not a purpose instilled in them or forced upon them by family members (like the classic example of a family that wants their creative son or daughter to become a lawyer, like their father and grandfather, instead of a musician or artist), and the person is taking meaningful (in their estimation) steps to accomplish that purpose, that tends to override almost anything we go through.

You hear great stories about people who overcome incredible obstacles in order to ‘follow their bliss,’ and that same thing that makes them want to get up in the morning, ready to go, interested in and enthusiastic about the day ahead of them, can also keep them away from drugs and alcohol.

If you want your children to grow up without drugs or alcohol, do whatever you can to support them in those things they are passionate about. And if they’re already into drugs or alcohol, get them into a good drug rehab program that will help them work things out so they then feel able to achieve something that truly interests them.

Her serious alcohol and drug abuse seemed to start when she married Blake Fielder-Civil in May 2007. Even though they divorced within a couple of years, I would venture to say that the relationship left her very scarred – she continued her drug and alcohol abuse until the day she died.

One of the major problems, as I see it, is that she never really did a full alcohol or drug rehab program. Also, it was reported more than once that she was still drinking and taking drugs even while she was in the various programs she did. How this happened, I don’t know. She also never really appeared to complete a program – her stays were very brief, sometimes lasting only a few days.

A good program, for someone in her condition, would have taken several months.

They would first have gotten her off the drugs and alcohol – safely, and in an environment where there were definitely no drugs or alcohol available to her.

Next, they would have worked on physical recovery. Getting all the drugs actually out of her system and, through a good nutritional program, restored her health to the degree possible.

They would also have addressed why she got into drugs and alcohol in the first place and worked with her on these problems until she was no longer overwhelmed by them.

She would have received the tools necessary to prevent her from getting involved in similar problems in the future.

And a program, with follow-up, that enabled her to go back into the world and live without alcohol or drugs.

This takes months. Not days, not weeks. But, it would have saved her life and she would be happily fulfilling her dreams as an artist and in life.

No one really knows why she did not enter such a program, or, if she did, why she did not persist with it.

If someone you care about is in trouble with drugs or alcohol, make sure you get them into that type of program and make sure they stick with it. It is known that that can be hard to do, but  successful drug rehab programs are designed to enable the person to persist. Drug Rehab Referral can help you find one.

It’s too late to save Amy. But it’s not too late for others.

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.

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.

Drinking after the game, and between games, going to parties, being a football star, getting into a college that’s better known for its football team and tail-gating parties than for its education seems to be as much as part of the game of football as the physical activity.

And many of the young football players in high school and college no longer look like the fit Adonises of yesteryear who take pride in their physical condition – they’re overweight and blubbery. I don’t know how some of them make it through a game without having a heart attack.

If your kid is going to play football, make sure you educate him about the sport – what it used to be – the pride of being a fit athlete and good team member – and encourage him to be that kind of football player, someone who takes the game and their physical condition seriously.

And let him know he can still get the chicks if he doesn’t drink. In fact, most girls would prefer a guy who isn’t binge drinking and then falling down drunk , who doesn’t smell like alcohol, who doesn’t feel he has to drink to prove himself or be one of the guys, and who doesn’t associate celebrating with booze. That’s admirable. Pouring pitchers of beer over someone’s head, vomiting, passing out, driving while drunk and risking your life, and that of your friends and innocent other drivers and pedestrians, or having to get someone else to drive you somewhere, is not. What kind of man is that?

Ask any girl – she’ll tell you that kind of stuff is not very attractive. Even if the guy is a ‘football star’.

In fact, if you want to keep your football player son away from alcohol, that argument may meet with more acceptance than any other.

If you can prevent your kids from drinking and they play the game well and take pride in themselves as an athlete, you’ve may have a winning combination. And your kid could have a much longer, more productive career that is not interrupted, or ended, by having to go to rehab.

But a new study now also shows that, not only are those kids more likely to need help when they grow older, they’re also having their brains damaged.

Alcohol is not easy on the body – and that includes the brain. From 12 to 20 years old is a very important period for brain development. If someone that age is binge drinking, for example, they’re damaging themselves for life.

According to the researchers in an animal study, MRIs revealed a smaller forebrain in those who have had a lot of alcohol.

Interestingly enough, the specific parts of the brain that show damage are exactly what anyone associated with an alcoholic would expect – those parts of the brain are related to being able to make correct decisions, allowing us to “predict consequences of our actions, control our impulses, refine our reasoning, and evaluate long- and short-term rewards.”

Amazing because, really, those are usually the exact problems parents of drinkers observe. And the same is obviously true for some adult drinkers.

The researchers also said “While these subtle brain changes are not making you a monster, they’re making you a less talented person or a person more prone to do stupid things whether you’re drinking or not.”

Just what we need.

Kids drinking in their teens, at college, and so on, not only seems to be accepted by the majority of Americans, it’s a right of passage. But what is it doing to our kids, and the future of the country?

If your kid is drinking and won’t stop, realize that it’s not just a kid thing. You’re dealing with alcohol addiction. Get help for them now by contacting a drug and alcohol rehab facility. It means a better future to them, for you, and for everyone. In fact, it could save their lives.

A successful drug rehab program takes months, and you need a team of professionals to help you through it. Getting off the drugs or alcohol is the first step, which in itself can be painful, sometimes dangerous and definitely needs supervision, then there’s getting all the residual drugs out of the body and getting healthy, thoroughly identifying and addressing the reason the person needs drugs and alcohol in the first place, and then setting things up so when the person leaves the rehab facility they can go back into the environment knowing they’ll be able to stay on the path.

With Sheen’s condition right now, I’d say that’s the least he needs.

But there is another possibility that might work – joining Sean Penn in Haiti. Sean went there a year ago planning on staying for a few days or weeks and is basically still there. On a recent TV show, he was referred to as the mayor of a 55,000 strong tent city. According to recent news reports, Sean and Charlie are friends. And Sean would welcome Charlie’s help.

Joining his friend in Haiti might be just what Charlie needs. It can really change a person to leave their cushy environment and spend some time helping others – not just with money, but actually getting involved in the physicality of it all. And, in Haiti, there’s no end to the physicality needed.

An experience like that can really change a person’s values and priorities. They come out of it seeing life differently. Whatever is bothering them and causing their drug addiction often pales in the light of what others have to live with every day. And it might bring Charlie back to earth.

Let’s hope, for Charlie’s sake, and his family’s, that he takes Sean up on his offer.