MEDIA RELEASE
08 May 2007
Tragedy Highlights Serious Community Issues

It’s tragic that it takes such an horrific event, two beautiful 16 year-old-girls being needlessly killed, to highlight the huge and growing issue that we are facing on our town and city streets each Friday and Saturday night around New Zealand.

Jennie Milne from How to DRUG PROOF YOUR KIDS at Focus on the Family NZ said “Today’s headline in the NZ Herald ‘Maybe there isn’t anything we can do to protect our children’ bought tears to my eyes.”

“Why is it that large gatherings of teenagers with no particular focus other than getting together and consuming alcohol and drugs and the resultant consequences of drunkenness, violence and unplanned sexual activity is considered 'normal weekend activity?”

The issue surrounding drugs and alcohol is a constant source of despair for both parents and teachers. If there could possibly be any good that comes out of it, it would be that the concern of parents around teenage drinking is now validated.

Parents are finding it difficult to enforce the rules when there is a general community acceptance of under age drinking and there are growing numbers of young people damaging their health through the misuse of alcohol and drugs.' says Milne, 'Couple this with the impact of cell phones on teen partying and gatherings and the growing technological gap between media savvy teens and their parents and there is good reason for concern.'

Our hearts go out to the families and friends of the young girls so tragically killed at the Christchurch Street party at the weekend. The anxiety parents feel is realistic. But Focus on the Family NZ disagrees with today’s NZ Herald headline. Focus on the Family firmly believes that the solution will be found family by family and community by community.
“From the family perspective we need to help parents understand that drugs and alcohol will be available to children but that parental attitudes and example are the key influence on how their children will respond.” Says Jennie Milne “There are some safety issues you don’t ‘hand over’ to schools, coaches and other parents, that you hold close as a parent and the issue of alcohol consumption is one of these.”

Delaying a child’s initiation of alcohol use is proven to reduce likelihood of alcohol related harm in later life. The real challenge is for parents to ‘hold the line’ and to lovingly communicate there position on using drugs and underage drinking.

As a community we need to address the general acceptance of under-age drinking and to ask “Why are young people in such a rush to start drinking at a critical developmental point of their lives?” Cleverly-packed ready-to-drink alcoholic beverages whose sweetness covers up any taste of alcohol are the first introduction to alcohol for many teenagers. They are more popular among 14 – 17 year-old-girls than they are with those 20 and over, According to Alcohol Health Watch,.

This was a tragic weekend for many families in New Zealand. But parents should know that there are a number of excellent initiatives already underway in NZ. Local communities will be strengthened when schools, churches, businesses and city councils to work together to provide regular fun, safe drug and alcohol-free events for our young people on Friday and Saturday nights. Through this cooperation, communities and parents can impact our children for the better and prevent the reoccurrence of such tragedies.

ENDS

© Scoop Media