Underage Drinking Laws Put Young People in Jeopardy

"Where are you goin', buddy?"
"Ah, man, tryin' ta get out."
"You want to go outside?"
"Yeah, gotta leave."
"Well, um, you just climbed into a coal bunker. This is the basement of an old house. Step out of there; have a seat and some water. You're too wasted to walk home."

I had planned all summer to write a column thrashing the laws against underage drinking, but I've reconsidered since returning to school this fall. Each weekend I'm drained from staying awake into the wee hours caring for "friends" and others who are about to pass out from excessive drinking.

The pundits, editorial writers and police are superb at riding their high-horses and demanding more draconian law enforcement. Speaking pragmatically, such out-of-touch public policy does nothing to prevent underage drinkers from playing beer pong till they puke.

I still oppose the underage drinking prohibition, but for different reasons: The failure of current alcohol law lies in its detrimental effect on public health. The law aside, there's nothing inherently wrong with minors having a drink or two, just not to the point where it causes health problems. An act is wrong, however, when it impairs the health of someone who is reasonably deemed incompetent to care for his health.

Speaking generally, then, when a law is supposedly designed to protect the health of minors but actually injures them, the law is counterproductive and a new approach is needed.

First, the threat of enforcement of minor consumption laws is a prime reason that seriously ill individuals -- like the passed-out friends I've been caring for these past weekends -- do not seek the medical and psychological care they need. Indeed, the law is a powerful disincentive for an intoxicated person to seek medical care for himself or others, knowing that he and his friends could be arrested while seeking medical help when drunk.

Admirably, some police departments claim to take a public health approach: "No one should ever think that if they're with someone who is intoxicated they should be concerned about getting in trouble for reporting that person is sick. Our goal is not getting people in trouble, it's saving their lives," said University of Pennsylvania Police Chief Maureen Rush.

Others are willing to trade off against public health: "Police remind the students that there is a 'zero-tolerance' rule that requires police to arrest juveniles caught consuming any amount of alcohol," warned one newspaper account, citing Valparaiso Police Lt. Curt Hawkins.

Society can enforce the law in as draconian a manner as it pleases. The law will never stop underage drinking. But the law, enforced as Valparaiso police claim it is, will stop intoxicated individuals from seeking medical care if they make the mistake of drinking too much.

The second key public health detriment that occurs from the prohibition of underage drinking concerns the relative safety of the place where the alcohol is consumed. Public health experts are adamant that the safest place to drink is in a supervised setting - such as inside a bar or nightclub with trained security and expert bartenders who stop serving intoxicated patrons, followed by moderately-supervised parties with large numbers of people. Most dangerous are small, unsupervised situations like "room parties."

Yet the small party is least likely to be discovered by authorities, and is thus the most attractive for underage drinkers. Instead of drinking under the watch of trained bartenders, underage drinkers find themselves in basements (and coal bunkers) with a handful of friends who are untrained and rarely even half-sober.

In other words, the law forces young drinkers out of the relative safety of bars and places them in the relative danger of their inexperienced friends. (The alcohol is obtained either from crooked liquor shops or by barely-21 friends who round up orders sometimes totaling several hundred dollars.)

The police can continue to chase minors from the relative security of drinking in supervised environments. They can continue to break up large, supervised parties and tout knee-jerk "zero-tolerance" policies, whatever the effects on public health.

I will continue to hope my passed-out friends recover without needing a doctor, although I am comforted knowing Penn Police won't arrest my friends if I seek care for them. Indeed, so long as alcohol is the forbidden fruit for the 18 to 21 cohort, I'll brush up on my "caring for extraordinarily-drunk people" skills. And I'll close off those old coal bunkers.

Reader-columnist Adrian Jones of Valparaiso is a senior finance and real estate dual-concentration at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.

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Like this column? Hate it? Send me your comments, and pass it on to your friends! I've been overwhealmed by the number of college students from across the country reading this column. Please keep up the support! -AJ

A reader in Idaho writes:

"I got an MIP back in September and went to court for it. If you want to hear about some bull, it would be my case. I got my license suspended for 6 mths, 12 hours of alchol classes, a year of probation and a $300 fine. It was my first offense, and I blew like a .05, but like you we have a zero tolerance policy for minors, so I got a posession ticket. What I don't understand is that I got the same punishment as someone who would've gotten a DUI. But this is Idaho. The cops here have nothing better to do than bust up parties. So that's my story I just thought I would share with you; I agree with your article."