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Source: Montgomery Advertiser, Ala.儲存Nov. 07--Kaila Toone stood in front of hundreds of juniors and seniors at Prattville High School on Wednesday telling them about a former PHS student who drank, drove, and hit a car head-on that her nephew was driving.Her nephew, Lance Ray Martin Jr., died June 18, 2011, as a result of that accident. He was 25 years old. The female driver was 19."Do you think (parents) want to see you die because of drunk driving, or kill someone else?" Toone asked. "There is nothing, nothing in the world that will be so painful to know that somebody who you love so much has died needlessly."It's just really not worth it, to take the chance. I pray, I pray that you will make the right decisions when you're confronted with drinking and driving."Toone spoke at the school as part of the Alabama Alcoholic Beverage Control board launching its new statewide educational and public awareness initiative -- Under Age, Under Arrest -- focusing on underage and binge drinking. The initiative highlights the dangers of underage drinking and binge drinking and the social and legal costs of irresponsible drinking.Mac Gipson, ABC board administrator, said the students addressed Wednesday soon will be in college, and "that's where the binge drinking component comes in. Some of it is done at the high school level. But a lot of it is done at the college level."We'll take this around the state. As the state (ABC) agency, we see it as our responsibility to do what we can to police and discourage this form of irresponsible drinking. We're put in a unique position -- yes, we sell it, we're the sales agent for the state of Alabama, for wholesale and retail, but the good thing about it is that we balance that with the control."A look at the numbersNationwide, about 5,000 people under the age of 21 die each year from alcohol-related car crashes, homicides, suicides, alcohol poisoning and other injuries. In 2008, more than 190,000 people under the age of 21 went to an emergency room for alcohol-related injuries, according to the ABC board.It is against the law for people under the age of 21 to consume or possess alcoholic beverages. It also is illegal for adults to provide alcohol to those under 21. Penalties include fines, possible jail time and, for minors, the loss of their driver licenses.The goal is to make "Under Age, Under Arrest" synonymous with underage drinking as the "Click it or Ticket" campaign is with wearing seatbelts.Schools will be a major focus. The ABC board is partnering with anti-drinking campaigns such as MADD, SADD and the Alabama Citizens Action Program's Amemini storageican Character Builders to help schools get the message to students and parents about the dangers of and penalties for underage drinking.Do not startJoe Godfrey, executive director of the American Character Builders in Birmingham, an organization that has been bringing messages of drug abstinence into schools for decades, told the students Wednesday to not even start drinking for four reasons: alcohol is an addictive and mind-altering drug, alcohol kills, alcohol costs money and alcohol can lead to violence.A study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 2006 showed that alcohol-related problems cost Americans about $223.5 billion annually. The costs are largely resulted from loss in workplace productivity (72 percent of the total cost), health care expenses for problems caused by excessive drinking (11 percent), law enforcement and other criminal justice expenses related to excessive alcohol consumption (9 percent) and motor vehicle crash costs from impaired driving (6 percent).The figures, Godfrey said, don't include the $8,000-plus that he spent buying his daughter a new car, "or the assistance we have given her in raising her three children after her marriage broke up because her husband could not keep his hands off alcohol."You see, my family chose not to drink, but we are paying the price for one person who did choose to drink."His challenge to the Prattville High School students: don't let the alcohol industry convince you with their clever advertising and image branding that drinking is "cool" and that "everybody's doing it."His challenge to school officials is to take advantage of resources available to teach abstinence to students, and to legislators and local officials: stop de-regulating alcohol sales."Look at these students and ask yourselves, 'Are the lives of these young people and their families worth the little bit of money we will get from alcohol?' "Additional FactsBy the numbers15 -- by this age, half of teens have had at least one drink18 -- by this age, more than 70 percent of teens have had at least one drink26 -- the percentage of peole age 12 to 20 reported consuming alcohol in the past month41 -- the percentage in Alabama of 18- to 20-year-olds who reported binge drinking60.8 -- the percentage of college students nationwide who are drinkers (39 percent are binge drinkers)Source: ABC boardFor more campaigninformation.underage-underarrest.comCopyright: ___ (c)2013 the Montgomery Advertiser (Montgomery, Ala.) Visit the Montgomery Advertiser (Montgomery, Ala.) at .montgomeryadvertiser.com Distributed by MCT Information Servicesself storage