The following editorial appeared Tuesday in the Idaho State Journal in Pocatello.

One-third of Idaho’s high school seniors confess having at least five drinks in a single sitting, according to a survey taken by the State Department of Education.

If the kids are telling the truth, that’s bad news. The worse news is that a goodly number of the 15,000 students surveyed statewide believe their parents approve of them using alcohol and being at parties where alcohol is available.

A segment on “60 Minutes” featured two parents who invited their son’s teen friends into their home for a drinking party, as long as they didn’t drive afterward. Turns out there was no law against it.

So, if you have a third of high schoolers engaging in binge drinking, many of them with parents who may be unconcerned by use of alcohol, what’s the answer?

Education, it’s guessed, though many teen drinkers pay no attention to statistics on dangers of drinking or other abuse, and they like keg parties.

Never mind that underage drinking puts many of them in jail – or at least in juvenile detention.

There was some good news in the 2004 Idaho Substance Use and School Climate Survey.

Between 80 percent and 88 percent of students in grades six, eight, 10 and 12 said they felt safe at school, and felt respected and cared for by their teachers. The number of high school seniors who smoke dropped by 18.4 percentage points from 1996 to 2004, and drinking by Idaho high school seniors decreased by 10 percentage points.

And in several areas surveyed, including tobacco use, drinking and drug use, Idaho’s results were significantly lower than the national average. Those numbers indicate some Idaho kids are getting the message about high-risk behavior.

As for the rest, those who drink underage and drive under the influence, it’s an ongoing battle to persuade them to do otherwise.

And you can talk all you wish about the responsibility of the schools and authorities, but in the end it’s up to parents to teach the kids to live the right way.