To the editor:

Alcoholism, among junior and senior high school students, has caused national concern. Our government is hiring speakers to cover the country and spread the alarm. Sixty people attended the speech that was given here recently.

Annually, in Kansas, 3,000 teenage girls have fatherless babies. Annually, in Kansas, 7,000 teenagers acquire a venereal disease.

According to the Lawrence school district, we have 2,391 junior high students and 2,526 senior high school students in our care.

Annually, downtown businesses give most generously to support the parents who provide wholesome activities to help keep our children safe during senior class spring festivities.

We have numerous organizations whose goal is to help keep our youth on track until they reach the level of maturity where they can make wise decisions on their own.

In this school district, so many of the children are raised by grandparents because their own children succumbed to alcohol and/or other drugs at an early age.

If you wish to be part of the solution, please get more involved with local youth by volunteering through the prevention department at our local school district or other local agencies that offer support to children and their families.

If you can enrich the life of just one child, it will be time well spent. If you don’t want homeless alcoholics roaming our streets tomorrow, help our children learn to make wise decisions today.

Mary Siegrist,

Lawrence