The Greater Maple Valley Community Center’s Youth Council leadership program has taken part in the Let’s Draw the Line campaign focusing on drawing the line between youth and alcohol within Maple Valley.

The campaign focuses on the privatization of alcohol and how that affects drinking among the local youth. As a community, the Youth Council leadership group took part in three separate areas of the campaign. First, Community Assessment of Neighborhood Stores surveys were completed at 10 different stores in Maple Valley to create an understanding of what type of advertisement for alcohol and tobacco is targeted to youth.

Interviews with Maple Valley Police were also conducted to find the correlation with theft and drinking now that alcohol has been privatized within Washington state. The information gathered was portrayed to different community groups through power point presentations as well as media awareness presentations that were given to students at the schools.

Third, a social norms campaign was conducted which included a series of posters in Tahoma Junior High and Tahoma Senior High to provide knowledge to youth stating that most kids do not drink in Maple Valley. This information was provided by the 2012 Healthy Youth Survey.

According to student’s research and input from local police the Youth Council feels that the privatization of liquor in Maple Valley has increased theft and underage drinking. The council feels that extra enforcement and education could help reduce these issues in the future.