Underage Drinking

Michael Totten, guest blogging at Instapundit, links approvingly to this Radley Balko op/ed on the folly of zero tolerance for underage drinking. Specifically, he's against prosecuting parents for throwing supervised drinking parties for their children's friends, on the grounds that the kids would be drinking anyway.

I suppose there is some logic to that, but I wonder if he's thought through all the implications of allowing adults to give alcohol minors.

For example, does he accept any minimum age for engaging in adult activities? One of the sets of parents we're supposed to feel sorry for served beer at their kid's 16th birthday party. I would be surprised if all the guests had already turned 16. I was 13 when I started high school. I had friends and cousins that were older than me. Should I have been served a beer at one of their parties? Two beers? Beers 'till I puked? Where would Mr. Balko draw the line?

As a parent, I would want to know my legal responsibilities for these minors. Is that father stationed at the door with the car keys also making sure that the kids don't get hurt or have sex if they're underage? Is he legally responsible if they do?

In this op/ed, all the adults are parents trying to be responsible by buying alcohol for parties full of kids. But what happens when adults start having parties and inviting kids as guests? We just had an ugly statutory rape case in Lawrence where a 13 years old went to just such a party. The mom of one of the rapists was asleep in the next room. But the kicker, and the thing that worries me the most, was that the judge treated the fact that these adults had given alcohol to this 13 year old as a mitigating factor. Instead of being horrified that they had gotten a child drunk and raped her, the judge seems to feel that it is unfortunate she has to sentence these poor men at all (they got 60 days plus probation) on account of that drunken little slut (I paraphrase). I bring this up as an example of the current trend towards treating ever younger children as if they were just short adults.

I guess, my problem with this op/ed is two-fold. First, he's advocating giving children adult privileges (and thereby responsibilities) that, let's face it, not even all adults can handle, just because they want them. I'm sure that 13 year old from Lawrence felt that she was mature enough to do whatever she wanted to do. She knows better now. I know kids aren't always open to learning from the experience of their elders, but does that me we should stop trying to teach them? Maybe we should also encourage kids to obey the law and not break it.

Which brings me to my second concern. He's mocking the police for enforcing the law, suggesting they have better things to do. Perhaps they do. If that's the case, Mr. Balko should be discussing a revision of the law with his state representatives, not cavalierly suggesting the police just look the other way . I'd feel better about this op/ed if it contained some constructive suggestions for a new law which would address some of the problems I've outlined above.