Wasted youth

Tony can't believe now how much time he's wasted in his 13 years — time spent sitting in a basement with some of his so-called friends, skipping school and drinking vodka.

He hooked up with booze two years ago, when the older brother of a friend called him names because he didn't want to drink. "So I got drunk and I liked it," said Tony. He was 11 that first time. Today he's 13, locked up in one of the state's youth corrections programs for the crimes he committed while under the influence.

Thomas is a little older, 16. He was trying to walk on to Granger High School's football team one day last fall, but some friends asked him to come party with them instead. He never made the tryout. He was probably lost by then anyway, he says, on the road to big-time trouble. He was a bully — a husky, mean guy who learned when he was in the ninth grade how to throw his size and his attitude around.

"I'd just walk up to someone. 'You got a dollar?' I'd hit any kid because I knew I was never going to get in trouble. I knew they were never going to tell." He'd take the money, buy beer or sometimes marijuana, skip school and head over to a nearby abandoned house and get wasted.

But he got cocky. One day he downed a bottle of gin and juice at school. "I did it with no hesitation, but I got caught."

He's locked up on charges of assault, tampering with a witness's testimony, drinking at school and trespassing.

Cam played on East High's basketball team, but trouble with drinking and other crimes have ended his high school athletic career for now. "I did a lot of beer runs, and sometimes I'd use force," the 16-year-old says. "It was a big mistake. All of that was a big mistake."

Cam, Thomas and Tony are in state custody. They told their stories to a reporter on the condition that their real names not be used. They spoke about how they began drinking and what contributed to the choices that cost them their freedom.

Their stories illustrate the difficulty Utah officials have as they try to solve a growing problem of teenage drinking.

It never crossed Tony's mind, when he first began drinking at age 11, whether the alcohol was damaging his brain. Thomas wasn't worried about going to detention or jail. And Cam couldn't have cared less about consequences of his actions when he bowled over a convenience store clerk as he bolted with stolen beer and food.

Instead, all three said they were concerned only with impressing their friends, feeling important and fitting in.

And this is the reality facing Utah educators and advocates in the fight against underage drinking: Peer pressure is a powerful intoxicant, too, and more young people in the Beehive State are succumbing to the lure.