Some people look at me as if I wasn't paying attention to the last five years of my life when I say that I worry a lot more about the impact of alcohol on teens than I do about heroin or other opiates.
It's not just the sheer numbers of today's kids that alcohol will, eventually, take down.
It's things like date rape, automobile accidents, kids tumbling backwards and breaking their necks, alcohol poisoning, murder.
Two 18-year-old girls from New Jersey decided to go clubbing in Manhattan Tuesday morning. When they emerged at 3 a.m., their car had been towed from a No Standing zone. They found their way to the pound. The attendants wouldn't release their car because they were soused. An ambulance was called for one of the girls. The other slipped away. A few days later, her strangled body was found in a dumpster back in New Jersey.
This is every parent's nightmare. Something similar could happen anywhere to any of our children.
A sidebar to the New York Times story about the murder put it into a chilling — to parents, if not, unfortunately, to kids — perspective.
Manhattan has been marked by a sharp growth in bars and nightclubs, but a majority of homicides occur in the other boroughs. Shootings on Saturday nights outside nightclubs in poorer neighborhoods in Queens, Brooklyn and the Bronx remain regular events.
“The drug most implicated with violence is alcohol,” Professor Karmen said. “Being under the influence of alcohol has been shown over and over again to heighten the risk of being ether a victim or an offender.”
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