Shaping Families

Curbing Underage Drinking

“The best way to approach [teen drinking] is to simply say: look, we have a zero tolerance policy for alcohol and drugs and it’s not even the legal issue, it’s really an issue of preserving your own physical development and making sure that you have every opportunity to be successful across your life.” —Brian Kelley

When Dr. Brian Kelley, head of the psychology department at a small college in Virginia is not teaching, parenting or providing leadership to youth at his church, he’s researching effects of drugs on brains. In detail!

Brian’s basic hypothesis in research is this: If a little bit of drugs can really mess up a baby’s brain, then a lot of drugs is sure to mess up an adolescent brain. Brian has published or co-published dozens of studies with esoteric titles like “Nicotine exposure in adolescence impairs learning of adult rats” and “Prenatal cocaine exposure can increase alcohol consumption levels.”

But he has taken his studies beyond the laboratory and is trying to talk to parents and youth and communities about the pervasive alcohol culture that invades everything from your giant home store at back-to-college time (upfront displays of paraphernalia for binge drinking games) to Superbowl (stacks of 24-can cases of beer in your neighborhood grocery.) Brian is featured in a two-part series on Shaping Families.

Listen - Transcript - Study Guide

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