Community Corner
Milford Prevention Council Joins "Sticker Shock"
Youth Council sponsors underage drinking prevention campaign.
Two busloads of teenagers pulled up behind Fairway Liquor Mart last Thursday. If you think this sounds like the start of a TV crime drama, think again.
The boys and girls, students at East Shore, West Shore, and Harborside middle schools, Lauralton Hall, and Jonathan Law High School were on a campaign to stop underage drinking.
Specifically, the goal of this program is to remind adults not to purchase alcohol to pass on to minors.
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The Milford Prevention Council, with the cooperation of two liquor stores -- Fairway Liquor Mart and On The Rocks Spirit Shop -- put English- and Spanish-language stickers on six-packs and boxes of alcoholic beverages saying: “HEY YOU!! It is ILLEGAL to provide alcohol for people under 21!!!”
The campaign, called Sticker Shock, is part of MADD’s Youth in Action program and was coordinated in Milford by the Milford Prevention Council’s Youth Council chaired by Charlie Clifford, executive director of the Woodruff Family YMCA.
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Tanya Schweitzer, director of the Milford Prevention Council, enthusiastically noted, “The campaign is an amazing program of the Youth Council. They have strong leaders who brought this to the table and coordinated the whole event.
"The Youth Council knows how to reach their community and they know what messages will be effective.”
The Milford Prevention Council received a $625,000 five-year federal grant in 2010 to implement education, programs and awareness campaigns to eliminate drug and alcohol use by youth. The Youth Council gives the boys and girls who are affected by the campaign a voice in reaching their peers. The initial goal is to eliminate marijuana and alcohol use among the 12- to 20-year-old population.
Teens participating in the Sticker Shock program were told to place the stickers on boxes and six-packs, taking care not to cover the company logo or the Surgeon General’s warning.
According to Jordan Cobin, a Milford middle school student, the program had the anticipated impact.
“It gets the message out to people buying alcohol to give to kids,” he said. “I think it will help prevent underage drinking.”
