Here we go again! (“Falmouth High championship party ends with arrests,” June 19.)

Is it any wonder that we still have such an issue with underage drinking when parents believe that the best way to celebrate student accomplishments is by hosting and/or condoning a party where underage drinking is allowed to take place?

Additional Photos

A clerk checks the ID of a customer buying beer at a store in Nashville, Tenn., in 2006. Parents need to be role models of lawful behavior by refusing to host gatherings where underage drinking is going on, a reader says. 2006 File Photo/The Associated Press

Is it any wonder that many teens do not take the laws about underage drinking seriously when we have parents who are willing to lie to the authorities in an effort to hide their poor judgment about breaking the law and putting teen lives at risk under the guise of “providing a safe place to drink”?

As a health educator, I spend a great deal of time educating students about how the messages portrayed in the media, along with pressure from peers, influence their thoughts and choices about underage drinking. Perhaps I now need to include parental behavior as one of those influences.

It is important for teens to get the message that celebrating success can be done without alcohol, especially when the law forbids it. The law is for all teens, and no one is the exception!

Teens are very impressionable and need adults, especially parents, to be positive role models who abide by the law. Teens don’t need parents to be their friends. The sooner both teens and adults realize this, the closer we will be to reducing the number of incidents like these that are still happening way too often.

Parents need to be part of the solution, not part of the problem.

Jeanne Billings

health educator, Mt. Ararat High School

Topsham

Anti-tick products could be cause of surge in soft-shells

The recent reports of early lobster shedding and the resultant excess of soft-shell lobsters on the market have me worried.

During the spring and fall tick feeding seasons, many of my veterinary clients (in desperation) resort to treating their lawns with acaricides containing heavy-duty insect growth regulators.

What have ticks got to do with lobsters and soft shells? Everything. Most of the lawn care and pet products containing insect growth regulators work by inhibiting the production of chitin, the main biopolymer found in the exoskeletons of insects, arachnids, arthropods and lobsters.

Is there a connection between desperate people trying to rid their yards of ticks, the heavy spring rains and soft-shell lobsters? I hope not.

Amy Peters Wood, DVM

Georgetown

Summers urged to explain reasoning on PACs, politics

Angus King’s thoughtful proposal asking Cynthia Dill and Charlie Summers, his principal rivals in the upcoming Senate race, to join him in an effort to forgo the benefit of out-of-state PAC money was rejected by both (“King’s offer to shun super PACs dies quickly,” June 14).

This is regrettable – big-money PACs are indeed, as Mr. King states, “destroying our politics.” Maine Senate candidates would do well to emulate the example set by Elizabeth Warren and Scott Brown in Massachusetts to attempt to limit big money’s influence, especially given the state’s reputation for independent thinking.

Let’s examine the other candidates’ reactions.

Ms. Dill’s response was measured and thoughtful. She thinks King should offer a much more tightly crafted proposal, and she is right: “The devil is in the details,” as she says.

But Mr. Summers’ response is incredible. He thinks that a proposal to limit big money’s corrupting influence on our political system is “tit-for-tat gimmickry”? He thinks such a proposal is “exactly what is wrong with Washington”?

How could a man who has been a top aide to Sen. Olympia Snowe, who has served as the regional director of the Small Business Administration and who served with such distinction in the Maine Legislature possibly make such a statement? Given his experience, he surely has seen the corrosive effects of big money first-hand.

Mr. Summers, please provide more details about how big out-of-state money will help us Mainers think clearly – and independently – about the issues in this upcoming campaign.

Jim Atherton

West Bath

Advocate for Burundians praises protest coverage

In response to Jennifer Mvula’s letter titled “Burundi official not hosted by pastor” (June 19):

I am also an advocate for and friend to many Burundian immigrants. In contrast to Ms. Mvula, I was heartened by the press coverage of the Burundian protest against the visit to Portland by Burundi’s minister of the interior, Edouard Nduwimana.

I’m also in awe of the Burundians who made their voices heard despite their fears for their families’ survival back in Burundi and their fear for themselves. (They were well aware of the camera in the hotel window.)

One man was so afraid when he heard who was in town that he packed his suitcase and ran in such a panic that he broke his leg. This is the level of terror this minister engenders. The Burundian asylum seekers are here because they fled for their lives having acted in opposition to the current government of Burundi.

Whether the Rev. Mutima Peter invited Nduwimana to “speak at the … conference” or “hosted” him does not change the fact that he knew this man was coming to Portland and that he kept that knowledge from both the Burundians in his congregation and those in the wider Burundian community of Portland.

The Rev. Peter goes to Burundi often. It is not believable that he could not know the terror and justified outrage that Nduwimana’s visit would provoke.

Sue Rudalevige

member, HopeGateWay United Methodist Church

Cape Elizabeth

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