Alcohol and Minors: The Dangers of Not Toeing the Line

Last June, the forty-something assistant baseball coach of Deering High in Portland Maine, Frank Watson, went out celebrating with friends. His team had just won its seventh state championship in 10 years.

He arrived home to the remnants of a party, at which several members of the team and their friends were drinking beer that some of them had purchased. Watson's wife had gone to bed.

Watson will spend 10 days in the Cumberland County Jail, beginning today...

...for not shutting down the party. His wife Kimberly was also convicted to a jail term, though she will most likely be permitted to do 60-70 hours of community service instead. The charges against them were 'furnishing liquor to minors,' and 'furnishing a place for minors to consume liquor,' respectively. (A niggle: the charges are a bit of a misnomer, as there appears to have been no liquor involved, only beer.)

I tried in vain to find the ages of the minors involved, but it's a pretty good guess that the underage drinking was done by adolescents who were in the 17-to-19, um, ballpark. Odd that none of the local media I've seen think of this as relevant. In terms of moral (if not, alas, legal) culpability, it's surely one thing to provide a bottle of bourbon to a 13-year-old, and another to give a couple of cans of Budweiser to an 18-year-old.

It certainly matters not to District Attorney Stephanie Anderson. "There is no safe or responsible way for adolescents to consume alcohol," Anderson claims.

That's news to millions of older teenagers and their parents in Europe, where neither binge drinking nor teen drunk driving are anywhere near as big of a problem as in the United States. Younger kids over there are often allowed a few sips of wine at the dinner table, and graduate to being allowed to drink legally when they're 16 to 18 years old, depending on the country.

Crazy foreigners.

Also absent in all the reporting I've seen on the Watson case is any mention of actual harm done.

Hell, I'll even lower that standard; I'd be satisfied that there was some justice to the Maine verdicts if the police had nabbed one or more of the teenagers drunk at the wheel following the party at coach Watson's house.

No dice? Then how about lowering the standard further still, and saying that any of the underage drinkers' intent to drive while intoxicated would be sufficient justification to jail the Watsons?

From all I've read, the prosecution couldn't even meet that low threshold. Whether the revelers planned to sleep over, or had in fact picked a completely sober designated driver to eventually get them home (thereby endangering no one), never factored into the proceeedings.

The law is the law, and even when the law is an ass, we have no viable option but to prostrate ourselves before the magistrate thusly:

"I'm taking ownership of this. I made a mistake, there's no doubt about that. I wish that I could take it all back."

Maybe Frank Watson means that from the bottom of his heart. Or maybe the statement was part of a plea bargain. Or perhaps he was belatedly begging for the court's mercy.

Given that he originally saw no terrible harm in letting the party continue, the second and third scenarios are more likely than the first. Which, to my mind, only exacerbates the wrongness of these kinds of convictions: Those who do not openly profess to believe in the relatively new orthodoxy that anyone under 21 should be forbidden from drinking alcohol, will likely receive harsher punishments than those who refuse to pay lip service to that article of faith.

It's a form of coerced speech that ought to grate on the conscience of every American who prizes liberty.

Some semblance of sanity here.

Comments

[GreginOz]

G'day Roj! Un-fkn-believable...I remember visiting L.A., age 18, whilst living in Mexico, to see the band Boston (Sammy Hagar supporting). Being 18 I couldn't even get a beer of course. We had 2 spare tickets and waved them about, to sell, outside the venue. In that time we were approached by THREE dealers. I could have bought coke, angel dust or pot, but not a fucking drop of alcohol. Boy did we get stoned;-)How ironic that a'merkin can go and kill dose kwazy foriegners and be killed at 18 but you can't drink 'til 21!

[hermesten]

If only this had happened awhile ago, while the Bush daughters were still underage, and they had been at the party --he'd be home free.

[alcohol rehab center]

For me i will not allow my daughter to drink alcohol while she is under age, it will affect her studies and her life. thanks for the post.

-jomie-