By Stowell P. Watters
Staff Writer
    Providing alcohol to minors in the state of Maine is illegal warranting a fine of $2,000 or netting the perpetrator a year in jail. With underage drinking-deaths prevalent in recent news, Kennebunk High School students, along with members of the Kennebunk Portside Rotary are standing up to alert the community about this activity.
    “This is about community awareness. People know it is illegal to buy alcohol when you are underage but sometimes forget that it is illegal to buy for people who are underage,” said Kristin King, senior co-leader of the Kennebunk High School Peer Helpers club.
    The Peer Helpers are a group of students who work underneath the school’s steering committee to provide guidance to younger students and promote awareness of issues such as underage drinking, physical abuse and drug use. Think of them as concerned youth who want to get more involved in peer to peer asset building, said the school’s Prevention Coordinator Sarah Ibbotson.
    The group of nearly 30 students recently hosted a ‘Grim Reaper Day’ in which a student, dressed as the reaper, would visit classrooms and tag other students. At the end of the eight-hour day an assembly showcased the 91 ‘victims’ and held a funeral for them.
    “They represented the 91 people we lose every eight hours in alcohol related deaths,” said Lauren Thompson, a junior in the club.
    The week of Dec. 7 marked National Alcohol Awareness Week and to recognize the problem of underage drinking Kennebunk High School students were given fact sheets about the dangers of consumption. Information presented to the students included the fact that teenagers generally drink six to seven times more than adults when they inbibe and the underage drinker is four times as likely to develop long-term drinking problems than that of a 21-year-old 
    The Peer Helpers Coordinator Thomas Dupuis, recently expressed his concern in a press release.
    “In light of the recent alcohol related deaths of youth people in Maine, this is very pertinent information to get out both to the school and the community,” Dupuis said, refrencing the recent underage drinking deaths in Portland, The University of Maine Orono and Maine Maritime Academy.
    Members of the Peer Helpers Club and the Kennebunk Portside Rotary visited eight local stores on the morning of Dec. 7 putting bright orange stickers on multi-packs of beer, wine-coolers and alcopops as a part of Project Sticker Shock. Ibbotson, who was present with a group at the Bradbury Brothers Market in Cape Porpoise, defined ‘alcopops’ as “any of the fruitier or more flavorful alcoholic beverages; like alcoholic teas or mudslides.”
    First introduced to Maine in 2001 by Fort Kent students, the Sticker Shock program is sponsored by the Maine office of Substance Abuse and is funded by a federal grant from the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. Other stores visited in the Kennebunk area were HB Provisions, Extra Mart, Port’ Mobil, Kennebunk Big Apple, Garden Street Market, Cummings Market and Wink’s Variety.
    Bethany Goldberg, general manager of the Bradbury Brothers Market, said that although they have a strict policy on requesting identification from shoppers who attempt to buy alcohol or tobacco products, their efforts cannot confront the problem of people buying for underage kids.
    “In summer this town is bustling, kids are partying, while our computers make cashiers verify the age of the buyer, there is just no way of knowing where the alcohol will end up. It is frustrating,” Goldberg said.
    Ibbotson handed Goldberg a survey that the store will fill out within two weeks. The questions asked revolve around alcohol sales and the amount customers rejected because of not having an appropriate age listed on their identification card. The Peer Helpers will use the data gathered from these surveys in hopes of substantiating their Sticker Shock program. For information regarding their findings visit the school Web site khs.msad71.net.
    A 2006 study by the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention and the Office of Substance Abuse and Bureau of Health and Human Services ranked Kennebunk High School as having one of the worst underage drinking participation-per-student percentages in the state; 46 percent in a prior 30-day survey.
    In a press release recently issued by the group Kennebunk Police Lieutenant Robert Mackenzie wrote:
    “Allowing minors to consume alcohol in your home, or any place   under your control, carries the same penalties under the law as furnishing, even if you don’t supply the alcohol,” Mackenzie wrote.
To contact Stowell P. Watters, call 282-4337 ext. 219 or email news@kennebunkpost.co news@kennebunkpost.com.