Alcohol & Teens Don’t Mix. Be Their Guide. Don’t Provide
YES Community Counseling Center’s Partnering in Action Change for Tomorrow (PACT) Initiative recently launched the underage drinking prevention campaign: Alcohol and Teens Don’t Mix! Be Their Guide. Don’t Provide. The campaign is aimed to help parents to talk with their youth and young adults about the dangers of alcohol and increase youth/young adults’ refusal skills when it comes to underage and binge drinking.
PACT’s ad campaign provides parents access to their website landing page (pactyes.org/parents), which provides information regarding the dangers of underage drinking; strategies to talk with your kids; and how to help your kids practice refusal skills and exit plans. Research shows that parents are the number 1 reason young people decide not to drink. Unfortunately, in most communities, only about 50 percent of teens report their parents talked with them in the past year about the dangers of alcohol. Talking with teens is crucial to help them make healthy decisions when it comes to alcohol.
YESCCC’s PACT Initiative works with five school districts and communities in Farmingdale, Island Trees, Levittown, Massapequa and Plainedge along with the three community coalitions: Farmingdale Alcohol and Drug Abuse Prevention Team, Levittown Community Action Coalition and Massapequa Takes Action Coalition. Additional partners include each community’s Chambers of Commerce in Farmingdale, Levittown, and Massapequa; Long Island Prevention Resource Center, Nassau County Police Department and the New York Counterdrug Task Force. For more information about how communities are working together to promote healthy youth, contact PACT via email at pact@yesccc.org or at 516-799-3203, ext. 131.
—Submitted by the YES Community Counseling Center
