Between 200 and 300 students from the Mankato and St. Peter school districts are referred to McGinnis each year for counseling for drug and alcohol problems. He said he sees trends with those students that are backed up by the Minnesota Student Survey, completed every three years by students in grades six, nine and 12. It asks questions about tobacco, alcohol and drug use, among other things.

The surveys show many Minnesota students say they have a vague knowledge about alcohol in sixth grade, but think they know a lot about alcohol by the time they’re freshmen in high school, McGinnis said. By the time they’re high school seniors, they say they know everything they need to know.

It’s not uncommon for students in sixth and seventh grade to get their first opportunities to try alcohol, he said. Those opportunities are often in the summer, when there is the greatest opportunity with the least amount of supervision. Each summer after that, the chances of a child trying alcohol grows.

“It starts out small and builds from there,” McGinnis said. “By the time we get to the ninth- and 10th-grade group, most kids have had some sort of experience. Not all, but they’ve had enough that they’re starting to feel pretty empowered by the thing. They feel that they understand what they’re doing. Attitudes are already developing around it.”

A small group of people that age is already using alcohol and other drugs regularly. A larger group of kids has an interest and is moving in and out of the circle of regular users. Most kids aren’t using at all, but they form a buffer between themselves and the people who are drinking, McGinnis said.

As they grow older and start becoming more aware of alcohol marketing aimed at adults, drinking becomes more accepted. It’s no coincidence that younger people are drinking more hard liquors now than they have in the past, McGinnis said. It was in 2001 that broadcast television networks lifted a self-imposed ban on hard liquor advertisements.

Overall, it’s a small group that is binge drinking by the time they get to college. But statistics, cited both by McGinnis and Minnesota State University Health Services counselors, show that group is growing.

For some, the binge drinking in college becomes a habit that follows them through the rest of their life.

McGinnis has gathered many statistics during his time helping teens and others with their addictions. For instance, he cited alcohol research created by Joseph Califano Jr., former U.S. secretary of health, education and welfare and founder, president and chairman of the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse.

Califano completed a study a few years ago showing that light and moderate drinkers only consume half the alcohol sold each year in the United States. The remaining alcohol is consumed by heavy drinkers, about 20 percent of the of-age drinkers, with help from underage drinkers.

“That 20 percent is drinking a lot of alcohol,” McGinnis said. “It’s way out of sorts with what the average is showing.”

Education

One obvious solution is education, but it can’t be put on the backs of schools, he said. It has to be something more complex than “just say no” repeated from year to year, he said. It has to be a comprehensive message about high-risk alcohol use that is repeated in school, at home, other places where young people gather and in the media. And the message has to change as the people who are supposed to be hearing it change.

And it has to start in the home and radiate out.

“I would like us to keep this thing relevant,” McGinnis said. “Kids get bored with this subject because they always feel like we’re saying the same thing. And, if we’re saying the same thing in ninth grade that we said in the seventh grade, I don’t blame them for getting bored.