THE Criminal Justice Planning Agency, with the CNMI Youth Advisory Council, Juvenile Justice Task 
Force, through the CNMI’s Enforcing Underage Drinking Laws Program, conducted a training on strategies to prevent underage drinking from Nov. 9 to 11 at the Pacific Islands Club.
Research shows that 25.5 percent of youths grades 9 to 12 have had their first drink by 13 years old and 41.4 percent of CNMI youth have self-reported binge drinking.
Mary Gordon and Sgt. Scott Friedlein of the Underage Drinking enforcement Training Center of Champaign, Illinois and Calverton, Maryland presented underage drinking prevention strategies, law enforcement strategies, media advocacy and youth training to over 50 attendees.
“We come up on environmental strategies changing the community in terms of how they view and look at under age drinking. We look at media advocacy, how to work with media, when to deal with it, and how to do it, the importance of doing it, when they are ready, and the tools useful to do it. And then we also are working with law enforcement,” Gordon said.
Representatives from the Alcoholic Beverage and Tobacco Control Division on Saipan and Tinian, the Department of Public Safety, the Board of Parole, the Office of Adult Probation, the Division of Youth Services, the Attorney General’s Office, the Community Guidance Center, Karidat Social Services, the Public School System, private and public school students participated in the event.
“There are agencies across the islands that sit with public health, with enforcement. We have 15 to 20 youths here who participated as well. We’ve got an unbelievable amount of diverse groups here that are partnering to make sure that happens,” said Gordon.
Facilitators and presenters included Jerome Ierome, executive director of CJPA; Vincent Camacho, Enforcing Underage Drinking Laws Program coordinator; Chairman of the CNMI Youth Advisory Council Edward Manibusan; Douglas Palacios; and David Maratita, ABTC director.
Enforcement agencies and the youth participated in alcohol and tobacco compliance checks on Saipan.
An overview of CNMI alcohol laws, youth presentations and an experiential exercise were also part of the seminar.
“Under age drinking is an adult problem. Even though it impacts the kids it’s really our problem as adults because we are not managing the situation correctly,” Friedlein said
The next step is sharing the information with the parents and students through PTAs.
“The kind of concept that the law is embracing now is to be more of the problem solver. The message we send to those young people when we have that contact, it can be one of we don’t care or can be one of embracing the situation,” Friedlein said.
