Although few issues were resolved, many present at a community meeting on teen drinking on Thursday, Nov. 30, feel the event was a good start to a topic that had never been discussed in a public assembly in Palo Alto.

"Maybe a few minds were changed," said Palo Alto Police Chief Lynne Johnson, who sat on the five-member panel. "Hopefully it heightened awareness so that people are thinking about it [teen drinking]. If we have done that, I think it [the community meeting] was a success."

The meeting was sponsored by the Palo Alto Drug and Alcohol Committee Collaborative, which was formed in 2002 to examine underage drinking in Palo Alto and find ways to curb the issue. The Collaborative includes PAUSD, the Palo Alto Council of PTAs, Adolescent Counseling Services (ACS), PAMF, the PAPD, City of Palo Alto Recreation, and Stanford University Medical Center.

Several people who attended the meeting felt that teens, who were not represented on the panel and made up roughly twenty percent of the attendees, were not sufficiently heard.

"Of course students were invited," former mayor Victor Ojakian said. "I think it would be interesting to get all the perspectives. I think it would be interesting to get a panel where some teens give their opinions."

Christy Perry, a mother of two teens, was especially concerned about the lack of attention to the teenage perspective.

"I feel some of the core issues were addressed [only] by the adults," Perry said. "That is a good beginning. However, I was quite distressed by the omission of the voices of our youth in the community, the very population we gathered together to support and understand in relation to alcohol use and abuse."

Most of the meeting was spent talking about the correlation between teen stress and drinking.

"Environmental change is really something that has to be looked at," Palo Alto Medical Foundation representative Becky Beacom said. "The solution to underage drinking isn’t just in parents and teens."

Johnson said that it was important for teens to use outlets to relieve stress other than drinking.

"The amount of stress put on kids in the community, [shows] the education institution needs to change," Johnson said. "But I think it is important to find other ways to reduce stress besides drinking."

Members of the collaborative showed concern about the perception that most teens drink.

"The majority of people are having healthy behaviors," Beacom said.

"We are very concerned about perception because perception and reality do not match up," said Brenda Stern, director of the ACS Adolescent Substance Abuse Treatment Program.

A technological feature of the meeting called Option Finder helped get a sense of the community’s opinion as the meeting went on.

Members in the audience were given devices with which they could answer poll questions about issues that came up during the meeting. The questions asked for the community’s anonymous opinions ranging from No. 1 for "Strongly Disagree" to No. 10 for "Strongly Agree." Results from these polls were shown instantly during the meeting.

"If you want to find what any group of people is thinking, tools like this [Option Finder] are the best way," said Chris Bui, who ran the Option Finder program.

At the beginning and end of the meeting, the statement "My perception is that teen drinking in Palo Alto is a serious problem" resulted in an average answer of 5.8 and 5.6, respectively, which translates to a response of "Tend to Agree." This shows the opinion that teen drinking is a problem stayed relatively the same after the issue had been discussed. Still, the goal of the meeting was not to change the public’s opinion, but to begin thoughtful debate about underage drinking.

In the end, the community meeting served as a starting point for a more involved discussion.

"The reality is we have not really had a serious dialogue about teen drinking in this community," Beacom said. "It is going to take deeper ongoing conversations because it’s a complex issue."