Teen Drug Panel Gives State Experts Some Sage Advice

California’s first teen-age drug prevention advisory group has told drug specialists it wants to be involved in helping create more and tougher anti-drug policies--including laws to ban alcohol ads from television.

Though drugs and alcohol have become less fashionable in the “just say no” era, they are still prevalent, the teens said. “It’s everywhere and it is out of control,” said Jolene Yee of Salinas, one of 15 members of the California Youth Council, a unique advisory committee appointed two years ago by the state Department of Alcohol and Drug Programs.

By the time people reach high school age, they cannot be influenced by being told to “just say no,” or by being bombarded with scare tactics, the teens said while presenting their report at Prevention 1990, a four-day conference in Costa Mesa sponsored by the state agency. Prevention programs are “like anything else parents say,” Yee said. “If they say, ‘Don’t run through the mud’--you do it.”

Based on interviews with adult authorities and peers, the report was compiled last year by the 10th- and 11th-grade students who range from MENSA members with 4.0 grade averages to near-illiterates who come from urban, suburban and rural areas, said adviser Ross Payson. Some of their families abuse drugs or alcohol at home, he said.

Prevention specialists, counselors and administrators cheered the youths’ recommendations, presented for the first time at the conference, which ended Saturday.

Their report called the notion of “peer pressure” a “cop-out and a smoke screen” used by adults to hide “guilt and responsibility for their own drug- and especially alcohol-taking behaviors and the influence of these behaviors on their children.”

Even abstemious parents may induce drug taking in their children by pressuring them to overachieve, the youths said.

The youths criticized prevention programs taught by naive or ignorant teachers. “A student could be drunk or stoned in class and some teachers would not even notice.”

Among the key recommendations were:

* Mandatory teacher training in identifying drug abuse.

* Criminal charges against adults who provide liquor to minors.

* Police reports to parents after busts of teen drinking parties.

* Teens should replace adults in elementary school prevention programs, such as DARE (Drug Abuse Resistance Education) because adults often speak over the children’s heads.

* Businesses should establish flexible hours so working parents can spend more time with their children.

* Clergy should be better trained in intervention and prevention.

The youths’ recommendations will be presented to the Governor’s Policy Council, said Chauncey Veatch, director of the Department of Alcohol and Drug Programs. “The single most important target group in the war on drugs has been our youth,” he said. “We really need to hear from them.”

The report carries a disclaimer from the department that the opinions of the “young authors” are theirs alone and are not necessarily endorsed by state authorities.

While several states have youth advisory boards, none except the California Youth Council are on the statewide level, he said.

The council this year will publish a Youth Empowerment Handbook on how youths can work with adults to create effective prevention programs for teens.

Some council members, 10 of whose original members have been replaced, expressed frustration and concern over being taken seriously as they researched their report.

After the presentation, some participants praised the students’ ideas.

“It’s important what they said about teachers being trained,” said Sue McCormick, chairman of the West Sacramento Community Services Division. “In our area, teachers have no idea what they’re looking at. And they’d rather not--(they’d rather) just send it back to the home. Obviously, nobody’s looking at it.”

Cathy McGuire, a community liaison manager for the Southern California Gas Co. in the San Fernando Valley, questioned the students on whether their ideas, such as self-sacrificing parents who communicate regularly with their teachers, are realistic in light of today’s era of two-income households and single parents.

“I don’t have an answer,” replied Antonio G. Vela of Solano, who said his own mother’s friendship with the teacher made him more accountable. “If the family’s not going to do it, the school has to do it.”

“We don’t know it all. You don’t know it all,” Kareem Ferguson, a Los Angeles High School senior, told the specialists. “But we can work together and get it done.”