I noticed on the front page April 10 with Steve Solloway’s column about alcohol and minors (“Will Westbrook athletic director’s resignation be heard, or go to waste?”), there was also a picture of three mugs of beer in full color, with a story headlined “Grab a mug, Mainers, craft beer bonanza’s coming”!

Advertising overwhelms every aspect of our lives. It’s all about sales, and the alcohol companies know it. We need to protect our children. Our children are their prime target.

Have we become indifferent? Are we so inundated with so much information we can’t focus on any of it? Is the world is moving so fast that stories come and go while we just go and go?

I know firsthand the evils of alcohol. I have seen families in crisis, broken relationships, broken hearts. All of us know someone who has suffered from alcohol abuse. Have we become indifferent to that as well? I’m wondering: What has happened to us? To our children? To our sense of community? To our empathy?

I am a product of the Westbrook Public Schools, as are my daughter and husband. I know the Westbrook people, and I still consider myself one of them. We are better than this, and we can do better than this.

I don’t have the answer. One place to begin just might be to support our teachers and administrators. I just know we can do better as parents, as citizens. We cannot become indifferent. Our children are counting on us. It is our responsibility. Let’s teach them now so prison guards won’t have to do it later.

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My grandfather used to say, “There is a devil in the bottom of every bottle.” (I hated hearing it as a teenager.) Sadly, he was right.

Yvonne Graffam

Gorham

 


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