Maine parents know more about teen alcohol use than they used to. They ask more often about the presence of liquor before letting their children go out for the night. And they are less likely to believe it when their kids tell them they don’t drink.

All thanks to a five-month campaign by the Maine Office of Substance Abuse.

“They’re a little bit more questioning. They’re a little bit more cautious,” said Bill Lowenstein, associate director of the Office of Substance Abuse.

Every two years, the office surveys about 68,000 Maine junior high and high school students. In 2002, officials found that more than 65 percent of kids had alcohol at some point in their lives. Nearly 40 percent had a drink in the last 30 days.

While in a separate survey of 500 Maine parents, less than 5 percent believed that their kids were drinking.

“There was a real discrepancy about what parents thought and what the realities were,” Lowenstein said.

To help teach parents about those realities, officials launched their first media blitz. Funded by tax money and the state’s tobacco settlement, the office created an informational Web site, newspaper ads and three television commercials featuring parents or a pediatrician talking about teen alcohol use. In one commercial, a disappointed mother faced the camera and quietly told viewers that she might have expected her son to drink, but not her daughter – who had always been a good child.

Targeted specifically to parents of adolescents, the three commercials were timed to run on major networks throughout morning news hours, during the day and at night.

Before the campaign started in January, about 79 percent of parents thought their kids were honest with them about drinking.

That number fell to just over 60 percent by the time the campaign ended in May, according to a survey commissioned by the Office of Substance Abuse.

After seeing the advertisements, more than half of parents said they plan to change – or had already changed – the way they act as parents. Many said they would talk to their kids more often and were now asking them about alcohol use before letting them go out for the night.

The dramatic results startled some officials.

The Office of Substance Abuse was accustomed to running generic national public service announcements, but it had never created its own local campaign specifically for Maine parents.

“I was surprised by the behavior change we got,” Lowenstein said.

Now, the office fields calls every day from parents who want more information. It sent out 7,000 parent kits, detailing what families can do to keep kids away from alcohol.

The campaign stopped its television commercials in May. Officials don’t have plans to air them again any time soon.

But they believe that the ads have done their job.

“I think we’re realizing that the media is an effective tool,” Lowenstein said.

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