An effective strategy.

Byline: The Register-Guard

The best way to keep minors from illegally toasting the new year, the old year or the arrival of any given Friday night is not to lecture them about the evils of alcohol or force them to watch grisly films of drunken-driving wrecks.

Those approaches have their place, but new research confirms that the best defense against underage drinking is a good offense - increased enforcement of minimum-age purchase and minor-in-possession laws. In other words, make it harder for kids to buy booze or to avoid consequences if they are caught drinking.

This admittedly common-sense conclusion is more useful from a strategic perspective than it might first appear. For one thing, it shows that education without enforcement isn't as effective. Public officials need to keep that uppermost in their minds as they make budgeting decisions aimed at combatting underage drinking.

In addition, even though 70 percent of Oregon minors get their alcohol from friends, parents or other social sources, 30 percent are able to buy it at convenience stores, supermarkets and other commercial outlets.

The research demonstrated that minors who were able to buy from stores had higher levels of alcohol consumption, binge drinking, impaired driving or riding with an impaired driver. Conversely, alcohol consumption was lower among minors who lived in communities where they were more likely to be caught by police if they drank.

The large-sample study was based on Oregon Healthy Teens, an annual survey of adolescent health behaviors conducted by the state Department of Human Services. The survey asks students how often and how much they drink, when they began drinking, how often they've had alcohol-induced blackouts and similar questions.

Researchers Clyde Dent and Anthony Biglan from the Oregon Research Institute in Eugene, and Joel Grube, director of the Prevention Research Center in Berkeley, Calif., analyzed responses from about 17,000 11th-graders in 93 communities taken in 2001 and 2002.

There's a lot of winking at underage drinking in the U.S., despite high-profile coverage of its consequences. This year alone, news stories reported the alcohol poisoning deaths of college students in Colorado, Arkansas, Virginia and Oklahoma.

Government estimates put the cost of underage drinking at $53 billion a year. It's impossible to measure the additional anguish experienced by grieving parents and the victims of unprotected or unwanted sex that resulted from underage drinking.

Wishing the problem away isn't going to work. Since 2002, citations for alcohol violations involving minors in Eugene are up 62 percent. To date this year, 1,885 minors have been cited for alcohol.

Oregon Liquor Control Commission agents ran nearly 1,000 compliance checks on liquor-license holders this year and turned up a 38 percent sales rate. Translation: Almost four in 10 establishments sold alcohol to underage volunteers sent in by the OLCC to buy booze.

Not only is it still easy for kids to buy alcohol if they know where to go, they're starting to drink at earlier ages. In the 2004 Oregon Healthy Teens survey, 28 percent of eighth-graders reported having a drink in the previous 30 days.

Fortunately, this year's study offers clear guidance on an effective strategy to address the problem. Emphasizing enforcement of minimum-age purchase and minor-in-possession laws, combined with regular commercial compliance checks by the OLCC, offers the best opportunity for reducing underage drinking and its myriad related problems.