Drink-curbing grant poor spending

The U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration has given Tennessee an $11.5 million grant to curb alcohol binge drinking. The grant will be used to fund programs intended to reduce the amount of binge drinking among 14 to 25-year-olds for five years.

The Center for Substance Abuse Prevention says that the ultimate goal is to reduce the amount of teenagers and young adults who binge drink by 4.3 percent within the next five years.

According to the Chattanoogan, "the grant will utilize evidence-based and emerging practices to positively impact the policies, practices, and attitudes that support unsafe alcohol consumption and create a hazard to public safety in communities across Tennessee."

The only evidence-based practice listed by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration is the Good Behavior Game. This game is typically played by first and second graders who are divided into small groups and awarded as a group for good behavior with small items such as stickers. 

In the long-term, 66 percent of those who participate in this game in the first two years of elementary school later go on to use illicit drugs, whereas 99 percent of non-participants use illicit drugs at some point in their lives. 

These statistics were drawn from a report released in the 2009 Institute of Medicine Report. The report also states that 86 percent of Good Behavior Game participants went on to receive high school diplomas, while 19 percent of nonparticipants received diplomas. 

If this is the case, most children are already participating in programs that reward good behavior, as our graduation rate is much higher than 19 percent. Do we really need more funding to dish out stickers to kids for their good behavior? If this is a part of the master plan to reduce binge drinking among teenagers and young adults, it will fail to impact anyone within the specified age group in the next five years.

All that is left to impact those ages 9 and older is "emerging practices." Let's face it: There is no sure way to keep the youth from drinking. Curiosity has a lot to do with this. 

I remember in high school when someone came to our class to speak to us about safe sex and the dangers of drinking. Everyone got to wear the "drunk goggles." They were so much fun that some stood in line to wear them again. Sometimes the more someone talks about something, the more appealing it sounds, whether or not that is the intention.

Plenty of high school students also signed pledges not to drink on prom night. Most did. These programs do not work. There is one way to curb drinking in teenagers ages 14 and older, and it doesn't require the spending of federal funds. It's called parenting. Most attentive parents would know if their 14 year old was binge drinking. Hangovers are relatively obvious. The lingering smell of alcohol and excessive consumption of water are among warning signs.

Expanding education on the dangers of binge drinking is useless, especially at a collegiate level. Everyone knows that binge drinking is dangerous. College students who die from alcohol poisoning know it's a possibility, but when they first begin to consume alcoholic beverages, they aren't thinking of their fate that evening. They are thinking about how much fun they are having in the moment. 

The same goes for drinking and driving. Those who drive under the influence don't think they are going to take someone's life when they do it. Often the biggest concern is a DUI. When drinking, most think they have everything under control until it is too late. Additional educational programs won't change that.

If we are to come out of the economic crisis any time soon, pork-barrel spending like this needs to be eliminated. Our tax dollars are being thrown into programs like this that have no documented rate of success. I could think of much better ways for Tennessee to use $11.5 million. I'd prefer for it to go toward rebuilding our cities after the flood, but of course I, like most other citizens, have little control over how our federal dollars are spent.

Krissy Mallory is a senior majoring in journalism and Spanish. She can be reached at skm2i@mtsu.edu.