Hundreds Attend Town Hall Meeting On Teens and Substance Abuse

By Meredith Mathews

Feb. 25, 2009: The Bronxville School’s multipurpose room was packed to the gills on Feb. 24 for a communitywide meeting on adolescents, alcohol, and drug use. 

Dr. Araxi Macaulay, one of the PTA Health and Wellness Committee members who helped put together the event, said organizers put out 150 chairs. Still, there were students, parents, school staff, and community members sitting on folding benches and standing in the doorways. They were all there to take on the problem of teens and substance abuse, with a panel of local experts.

Mayor Mary Marvin spoke only briefly, mentioning her roles not only as the village’s leader but as a concerned parent. She pledged her support for school and law enforcement officials, as well as for teens. “The village has the most wonderful, wonderful children, who sometimes make bad judgments,” Marvin said.

Next, Westchester County District Attorney Janet DiFiore, who’s also a Bronxville resident and parent, marveled at the turnout. “It’s a complicated issue,” she said. Scientific research has shown that abusing alcohol and drugs at a young age can cause emotional, psychological, and physical damage, according to DiFiore, and make teens more likely to develop substance-abuse problems as adults. She sought to set the audience’s mind at ease about her outlook: “Our goal in the district attorney’s office is never, as a first response, to punish ... but to educate parents ... and talk in schools to help children learn to negotiate these challenging issues.”

Bronxville Police Chief Christopher Satrialeoutlined the scope of the problem in the village. Since June of last year, his department has responded to nine incidents of underage drinkers being incapacitated, with some requiring hospitalization in serious condition. More than half of these cases involved people who were 16 years old or younger, and one 14-year-old had a blood alcohol content of .30 (the drunk-driving threshold is .08). “I will not stand for losing a child in the village under my watch,” he declared. To combat the problem, the police department is on its way to having half a dozen certified juvenile officers who will speak in health classes and serve as an approachable resource for village teens. He reminded students that state laws treat people 16 years old and up as adults, for instance in cases of providing alcohol to younger teens. Satriale also encouraged people to cooperate with police who investigating these incidents, saying, “We need your help.”

This isn’t the first time the village has addressed substance abuse among adolescents, pointed out Dr. John Kehoe, the school system’s assistant superintendent for administration. “The faces change, the kids change, but the problem persists and our solutions need to persist and get better,” he said. The school’s role, Kehoe explained, involves education, intervention, and enforcement of its code of conduct. 

The code of conduct applies not only to athletes but to any student taking part in extracurricular activities, pointed out Athletic Director Karen Peterson. It is meant to give students a “clear set of expectations,” she said, but cannot by itself solve a community problem. Likewise, according to Peterson, the code “is not meant to punish; it’s meant to educate.” Work is underway to consider revisions to the code, such as whether it should address substance abuse that occurs when students are not in school.

For a medical perspective, audience members listened to Dr. Carlos Flores, Lawrence Hospital’s director of emergency medicine. “Alcohol affects everything,” he remarked. “You name an organ, there’s an impact.” He also described some of the interventions that teens admitted to the hospital for alcohol poisoning face, such as intubation and artificial respiration. Flores also pointed out that sexual assault and rape are associated with alcohol use in adolescents. To the young people attending the meeting, he advised talking to parents about pressure to drink or do drugs: “We’re probably the best source you have. We’ve been there one way or another and we can guide you through it.”

The last panelist to speak was Dr. John Wallace, director of the Tuckahoe-based Maxwell Institute, which focused on treatment for chemical dependency. He mentioned another community’s underage drinking task force which mobilized all aspects of the community to fight the problem, resulting in decreases in the number of teens involved with alcohol. Bronxville should similarly mobilize and make a lasting commitment to address the problem, Wallace said: “We get together when there’s a big crisis, then forget about it and go into denial.” He also outlined steps parents can take to prevent their teens from abusing alcohol and drugs, including modeling responsible behavior themselves, establishing clear rules and expectations, and refusing to provide alcohol to teens. 

A number of interesting aspects came to light during a question-and-answer period. Satriale spoke about a Bronxville merchant who, a few years ago, was arrested for selling alcohol to teens; that merchant was convicted and spent weekends in jail. Police are vigilant about monitoring local establishments licensed to sell alcohol, he added.

Macaulay reported that the meeting was just a first step in approaching the problem. Beginning next month, parents will be invited to a number of grade-level coffee talks. These will touch upon strategies for keeping their children safe from substance abuse, and generate ideas for tackling the subject as a community.

A number of programs Bronxville has tried in the past to confront these issues could be revived, suggested Kehoe. One, called Safe Homes, involved publishing a list of parents who pledged to monitor their children’s parties and to refuse to allow alcohol at parties; this idea met with applause. Eastchester Town Council member Christine Doody Doherty, a schoolteacher, mentioned her school’s program that recruits varsity athletes to educate younger students about alcohol and drug abuse. “We had that one too,” Kehoe reflected. “I would endorse rolling that one out again.”

One student asked what teens should do when friends are endangered by using alcohol or drugs. “The reason kids aren’t calling police is they assume they’ll be arrested or get in trouble,” she said. Satriale sought to allay such fears. “There most definitely is a reward for cooperating with the police department and helping a friend,” he said. “We are not only in the business of arresting people.  I can’t stress that enough.”

Audience members and panelists alike appeared to leave the meeting inspired to confront the problem head on. “It has to stop,” Kehoe commented. “Otherwise you will bury somebody.”

Pictured Here: Panel members addressing the Town Hall Meeting on Drug and Alcohol Abuse from left to right: Dr. John Wallace, Director of the Maxwell Institute; Karen Peterson, BHS Athletic Director; Dr. John Kehoe, Assistant Superintendent; Chief of Police Christopher Satriale; District Attorney Janet DiFiore, and Mayor Mary Marvin.

Photo by Meredith Matthews

Max McGrath: My Confession to Teens on Drinking and Drug Use

Sept. 10, 2008:  In my day as a student at Bronxville High School my thoughts did not center around the important aspects of getting an education but helping to organize the next beer lot party on the weekends.

I learned early, being under age, where and how to get, buy or scam the next case, keg or bottle for the weekend ahead. To me the academics were as boring as stale bread. The excitement came only on the weekends partying with my friends. By the way, every first drink I ever took from a teenager to adulthood was escorted by a small voice in my head that whispered “Do not do this” of course I ignored this warning till I was almost over forty.

At the time in the 50’s and 60’s everyone in the town drank. Parents, teachers, students, Doctors and Indian chiefs, and it was accepted till one of the student participates in their search for “fun” would periodically park their family car up against one of the towns oak trees.

Only then would there be a crack down on teenage drinking for a brief amount of time, which would begin again when the parental and law enforcement dust cleared.

Back then I didn’t see the symptoms of my own alcohol abuse trying to expose itself nor was I interested in curtailing my “fun” in spite of good friends suggesting I might have a problem. The introduction of the drug culture was a welcome addition to my arsenal of “fun”.

I have been a member of a twelve-step group going on twenty-three years now. Prior to joining that group, let me outline what drinking and drug use did for me. It cost me an excellent job, two marriages, loss of dear friends and for a while family, bar fights, $432m in debt, health, wealth, morality. The way back to again signing up to the social contract and being a contributor was an equally long road. The cost of the abuse was severe.

There is no doubt in my mind that if I had not reached a bottom as I did and turned to a program out of desperation I would either be jailed or dead today. Anytime I got in trouble, it was alcohol related. I never had any trouble while sober.

The purpose of this expose is that it might touch teenagers that have these priorities of self-destruction masked around “Just having fun” on the weekends, that’s how I started.

It is also an attempt to influence the town principals and educators that a course on substance abuse is just as important as algebra, the study of angles. When the angles don't line up, the formula is a failure. My angles due to alcohol, did not match up till almost middle age. There is lost time in my life that I wish I had back, to use more fruitfully.

My drinking illustrated to me over time that I was headed for the oak tree at 110 mph. The only good that came out of the realization is this: I have most of my friends back, I have my family back, I have myself back, I'm again starting over trying to build a consultancy, for the second time, both times sober. I have back almost all that I lost except the time.

The point is this, if I had a little education on addiction and good role models to look to in the community other then my parents (I wasn't going to discuss alcohol with them, they would have locked me up till I was fifty) may have made a difference, at least I would have known where to go to get off the roller coaster when I became willing to step off.