Parker students learn dangers of underage drinking at awareness class

Parker students got a direct warning about underage drinking on June 22, when the Arizona Department of Liquor Licenses and Control brought an Alcohol Awareness class into a community school event in Parker, Arizona. Youth were shown the concerns and dangers tied to drinking before 21, along with the life consequences that can follow from early poor decisions.

The session emphasized prevention and education, not punishment. It fit the Department of Liquor Licenses and Control’s K-12 Alcohol Education Program, which gives Arizona students age-appropriate instruction on legal consequences, health risks, peer pressure and responsible behavior. The agency says its Education and Prevention Unit can schedule presentations and school events, part of a broader mission to safeguard Arizona communities through responsible alcohol regulation and public safety.

That approach matters in the Parker area, where the Parker Area Alliance for Community Empowerment has spent decades working on substance use prevention. PAACE was established in February 1995 to address emerging issues and unify the community around preventing substance abuse and gang activity, then later focused on underage and binge drinking and medication abuse prevention. The coalition said it received a Strategic Prevention Framework Grant in 2009, started using Sources of Strength for its Youth 4 Youth program in 2011 and has averaged about 20 members at monthly meetings.

PAACE’s partner list underscores how local prevention work has depended on a wide network of institutions, including the Colorado River Indian Tribes, Parker Unified School District and the La Paz County Sheriff’s Department, along with other community organizations. In a place like Parker, where schools, tribal partners and county agencies overlap, an alcohol-awareness class can reach students before risky behavior turns into a police call, a school discipline case or a family crisis.

The class also lined up with a statewide policy framework built around prevention and enforcement. The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration says the Sober Truth on Preventing Underage Drinking Act was enacted in 2006 and reauthorized in December 2022. Its Arizona underage-drinking report draws mainly from calendar years 2021 and 2022 and tracks past-month alcohol use, binge use, alcohol-attributable deaths and youth driver fatalities.

For La Paz County, the Parker event showed how an in-school lesson can connect local families to a larger public-safety system. It gave students a reminder that alcohol use under 21 carries legal, health and roadway risks, and it reinforced the role of schools, tribal partners and state regulators in stopping harm before it starts.