Sheriff Mark Barrick, Mathews School Superintendent Dr. David Holleran and Mathews High School principal Al Green recently gave a serious talk about alcohol to students at Mathews High School.

During an assembly on Oct. 22 in the school auditorium, Barrick told the student body that a lot of youth he knew had been at a party where there was no adult supervision and that a large amount of alcohol had been consumed. He said he didn’t want to see anything bad happen to any of the students, and that he was instituting a zero tolerance policy for alcohol use among youth.

Holleran gave statistics on the amount of underage drinking that occurs nationwide, saying that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control cites alcohol as the most commonly used and abused drug and that its use by people under the age of 21 is considered a major public health problem.

There are more than 4,700 underage alcohol-related deaths a year nationwide, said Holleran. Further, he said that 12-20 year-olds dr...