Articles Posted in Information/Personal Interest

For many, this week is registration for the Fall 2007 classes, and many high school students will be out celebrating the last of those summer nights with a drink or two or three or more, and maybe some drugs to enhance the effects of the alcohol. Some young and promising students may die on our roads this week! We know that cars, teenagers and alcohol and drugs don’t mix, so why do teenagers face such high death rates? According to the U.S. Department of Transportation’s 2004 study, 16-21 year olds had the highest fatality rate, and 39% of those deaths were alcohol-related. Why?

Could it start at home? At Deerfield High School in Deerfield, Il Lake County Circuit Judge Raymond Koski told a room full of parents, “Sometimes parents just have to say no.” You can’t tell a child it is ok to drink in the basement at home and then not expect them to drink anywhere else. It just doesn’t make sense! According to the story in the Chicago Tribune, one mother of eight says she is fed up with the drinking and drugs. “This is what the ’70s brings to this, the mindset that [parents] lived through it, so their kids will too. … [But] you give a kid enough rope, they’re going to hang themselves.” Ellen Waltz told the group that included parents grieving for the loss of four high school students who had recently died in a car accident homecoming night, teens drinking and using drugs with their parents’ permission is an open secret, and one in eight high school students surveyed admitted driving after drinking alcohol.

While parents widely believe that a teenager’s peers are more likely to influence them, a Highland Park Hospital psychologist John Jochem indicated that surveys of young people showed otherwise. When parents talk – teenagers listen, even if you think they don’t.

Hannah Fredrickson is my new hero in a world with few heroes left! You see, Hannah did something almost no one her age or in her position would have done – she told the truth, in pictures no less, in the Conifer High yearbook, about the sad prevalence of alcohol and drug use by her classmates at Conifer High School, located in Conifer, Colorado. According to the Rocky Mountain News, Hannah, a senior and the yearbook editor, and her staff, made the decision to shine a light on some serious issues for their senior yearbook instead of the usual fare of senior smiles and silly stuff.

An admirable choice, right? You might think the town would have held a parade in their honor or they might have received some positive reinforcement for such a noble effort…but, sadly they did not. In fact, after publishing the yearbook, which included at least five pages of under-aged teenagers drinking and drugging, and several pictures of students proudly holding up citations for under-aged drinking, many parents condemned the pictures and the yearbook staff that published them.

What is going on here?? Are the inmates running the institution???? Hannah and her staff should have been commended for placing an emphasis on a very real alcohol and drug problem in not only their school but so many others across our nation!
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American automakers are fighting hard to stop a Senate bill that proposes a 40% increase in automobile fuel economy within thirteen years, by the year 2020. Instead of fighting to maintain their inefficient ways and continually losing market share to foreign car makers, why isn’t the American automobile industry challenging itself and foreign automakers to develop the most fuel efficient and safe automobiles?

Why this “can’t do” attitude from the American auto industry? They do everything they can from lobbying, to threats, to propaganda to fight progressive fuel economy and safety legislation. Why does the American auto industry have to be mandated by laws to do the right thing when it comes to auto safety and efficiency? Their political and lobbying power is so great; they pressure our elected representatives into mediocrity and make them back down from doing what is in the country’s best interest?

Do you see the European and Japanese automakers fighting against fuel economy and safety regulations? The foreign automakers seem to be developing safer, smarter and more efficient cars without government regulations. Is it possible that the American’s “can’t do” attitude is what has gotten them into their poor economic performance of late and has lost them major portions of the American automobile market?

President John F. Kennedy, in a speech to a joint session of Congress on May 25, 1961 said, “Now it is time to take longer strides–time for a great new American enterprise–time for this nation to take a clearly leading role in space achievement, which in many ways may hold the key to our future on earth.”

President Kennedy committed the United States to achieve, before the decade was out, “… landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth. No single space project in this period will be more impressive to mankind, or more important for the long-range exploration of space; and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish.”
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