As you may recall, I resolved this year to read at least 75% of the books I buy. Well, the year isn’t over yet, but I think I am in trouble. Saturday we went to Brentwood Library’s Arbor Day Celebration and as a special treat the Friends of the Library were having their quarterly used book sale. To make temptation even worse, all books were half price. That’s half price of the usual used book price! So a hard cover book was $1.50!!! Now, how many books would you buy at that price?
I was very prudent and only bought seven. I am a slow reader so if you add them to the ones I bought earlier this year, I am doomed! But there are nine months to go so I could still get through them all.
On another front, there was an interesting article in this morning’s paper on a teen drinking survey done by The Partnership at Drugfree.org. In it they found that 45% of teens did not think that having 5 or more drinks a day was a problem or a “big deal.” To give us more pause, use of marijuana and Ecstasy by high school students increased.
Good news is that the percentage of teens who use alcohol was down from 50% in 1998 to 35% in 2010. And while the average age of first use of alcohol was 14, one-fourth of the 68% of teens who drink alcohol had their first drink before age 13!
I wish there was an easy answer to teen drinking and drug use, but of course there is not. You can find a lot more info on www.alcoholfreechildren.org. as well as http://www.madd.org/.