• Kids struggle to break alcohol's grip
• 'I don't have a problem, and if I do, so what?'
• The parent's role
• Schools arm children with arsenal of 'life skills'
• Wounded adolescents find Focus
• Program extends hand to hardened youth
• Alcohol-related deaths in 1995

These fake and stolen identification cards are just part of a huge collection gathered by Portland undercover officers Dean Goodine and Mark Gibbons. Minors who are caught presenting bogus identification can pay fines of up to $100. Staff photo by David A. Rodgers

Figures compiled in 1997 by Maine's Office of Substance Abuse show that young Mainers binge-drink - consume at least five drinks in a row - more than kids throughout the Northeast, and often, the rest of the country.
When asked, 27 percent of Maine 10th-graders said they had binged in the past two weeks, compared to 22 percent of other 10th-graders in New England. In the 12th grade, 35 percent of Maine kids had binged in the past two weeks, compared to 31 percent in the Northeast, and 30 percent elsewhere in the country.
Another study, prepared in 1995-96 for the Office of Substance Abuse by Dr. Robert Dana and the Margaret Chase Smith Center for Public Policy, asked more than 6,000 Maine middle school and high school students about their alcohol use.
The study found that almost 90 percent of high school students, and more than half of seventh-grade students, had at least tried alcohol. Of the high schoolers, almost a third had binged within the past two weeks.