Town Hall Meetings on Preventing Underage Drinking In Your Community
Changing Community Norms Offers Promise For Preventing Underage Drinking
The Alcohol Prevention Task Force in partnership with the Rural Virginia United Coalition and the Middle Peninsula-Northern Neck Community Services Board Prevention Services Division is targeted to changing community norms in an effort to prevent underage drinking. Young people’s alcohol use is an extremely critical problem. This Task Force is designed to give communities the tools and strategies to prevent youth from beginning to use alcohol and to educate those who do drink about the risks they are taking. The Alcohol Prevention Task Force is a community effort and will provide health professionals, parents, educators, public officials, law enforcement officers, faith based organizations, community leaders, and youth with communication tools and strategies needed to reduce the occurrence and acceptance of underage drinking.
The Task Force’s primary goal will be to motivate communities to change norms that may encourage or allow underage drinking. The secondary goals of The Task Force are to increase the number of youth who understand the risks associated with alcohol use and to empower them to resist the pressures to drink that they often get from their peers and from advertising.
Reports from the Center for Substance Abuse Prevention, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) reveal alarming information on the number of young people who drink. The 2005 National Household Survey on Drug Abuse established that there were about 10.8 million underage drinkers in the United States.
Each community must recognize the serious consequences of underage drinking. The Alcohol Prevention Task Force is an opportunity for communities to work together and make their highways safer, their schools more effective, and the future of their young people more certain.
To schedule a Town Hall Meeting on Preventing Underage Drinking in your community, please call Prevention Services at 1-888-PREV-550. For additional information regarding Town Hall meetings log onto www.stopalcoholabuse.gov
Does your school district collect data on youth substance use? This anonymous survey is designed to be administered to 8th, 10th and 12th graders.
If you wish to expand the survey in your school division for division specific data, please call Mert Rives at (804) 282-6760 to explore the different ways of accomplishing this.
Information and copies of the Virginia Community Youth Survey and the Youth Tobacco survey are available at 