I have seen several articles lately in The Hays Daily News, as well as letters to the editor, regarding the tragic teen deaths due to alcohol in Ness County. I am a retired law enforcement officer. I taught DARE (Drug Abuse Resistance Education) for nine years, as well. I am so familiar with our children's public enemy No. l -- alcohol. Alcohol used to be the No. 3 killer of children and young adults (around 85,000 a year); maybe it's No. 1 now, I don't know. It kills directly and indirectly through accidents, alcohol poisoning, car wrecks and the like.

AIDS/HIV is like the No. 22 cause of death in the U.S.; it's way down on the totem pole (around 14,500 a year). In 2008, federal funding for AIDS/HIV was about $17.5 billion. Funding for drug/alcohol was $3.8 billion. I am not against AIDS treatment and programs, I simply question our priorities. Booze kills more of our kids and young adults by far than Americans killed by AIDS, but receives a quarter of the federal funds. I got these figures off of the Internet from links to Global Health Reporting and also the Legal Action Center. Several years ago, I researched the same information with the GAO and CDC and found essentially the same numbers. These might not be exact figures, but the message is clear: AIDS treatment and programs are considered more important than our kids' lives.

The Legal Action Center seeks to get the feds to increase funding for alcohol and drug treatment/programs and states there is an urgent need for drug and alcohol treatment services. They state that according to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration many people who have tried to get help for their addiction were denied treatment because of cost or insurance barriers. Addiction treatment services are successful in cutting alcohol and drug use by nearly half, reducing crime by 80 percent and deterring many youth from beginning to use alcohol and drugs in the first place. They also state that for every $1 the U.S. government spends on addiction treatment saves $7 to $25 in other costs. Moreover, each $1 invested in alcohol and drug prevention saves $5.60.

One thing I do know that can be done is that local law enforcement can be aggressive in picking up youth for alcohol violations so that they can get into treatment immediately. The people must back them up though and not hammer them for "picking up my kid." If they get blasted all the time, believe me they are going to find something less stressful to do. Our mindset needs to change. We have to get rid of the notion of what people think of us or our parenting skills. I've got grandkids now and when the time comes for them to try alcohol, I want the cops to pick them up. I'm not naive, kids are going to experiment. I'll tell that cop "thanks for saving my child's life tonight." I much prefer live, arrested sons, daughters and grandchildren opposed to senseless funerals. In these sad funerals, I have never seen any flowers or cards from Budweiser, Coors or any other alcohol company, and I don't expect I ever will.

They have their priorities too -- money, and they could care less how many kids die using their products. They do have lots of money to spend on lobbyists and campaign funds for politicians, which explains a lot about why we don't have much funding for alcohol programs/treatment.

Finally, I don't have to know all the facts or figures about alcohol and its relationship to crime and teen death. In 28 years in law enforcement, I've seen the connection over and over again. I hope and pray we can get over this scourge in the lives of our children in this country. On the financial side, we could probably pay off the national debt if we just put our money into our children's future through effective alcohol prevention programs like DARE and others. The savings alone would be phenomenal.

Crime would go down tremendously as most would not do the things they do if they were not under the influence of alcohol and drugs.

We wouldn't need to be trying to fund a national health care system, because elimination of all the drug/alcohol disease and health issues would practically vanish and the only ones left to deal with would be smoking (which I think is the No. 1 killer of Americans, other than abortion) followed by physical inactivity which is the No. 2 killer. No. 2 could be solved by backing away from the supper table a little bit and going for a walk a couple times a week.

David S. Denton,

Stockton