By Traci Toomey, Ph.D.
When we talk about preventing or reducing teen drinking, our first instinct may be to focus on the teens. Let’s teach youth how to “say no” or let’s arrest or fine those youth who are caught illegally drinking. Our second instinct is to target parents-if parents supervised their teens better or had family rules against drinking, youth would stop drinking. Focusing just on teens and their parents however, will not eliminate youth drinking. These approaches ignore the broader, pro-alcohol environment that teens are exposed to every day. All our resources spent on educating youth and parents and enforcement against teenage drinking is for naught unless we change the environment. Let’s take action to prevent adults in our communities from illegally selling or providing alcohol to teens. Let’s take action to reduce the number of pro-alcohol advertisements our youth see each day. We can change the environment by implementing and enforcing institutional, local and state policies that make it less likely that youth can get alcohol.
Selling or giving alcohol to a person under age 21 is a gross misdemeanor in Minnesota. Despite the law, teens throughout the state indicate it is easy to obtain alcohol from licensed alcohol establishments, older friends, family members, co-workers and even strangers. Recent surveys of hundreds of alcohol establishments throughout Minnesota support these reports. Young women who looked under age 21 could purchase alcohol without showing any age identification in nearly one out of every two tries.
More policies and active enforcement of new and existing laws and policies are needed to identify and stop adults who believe there is nothing wrong with supplying alcohol to youth. Without the belief that they will be arrested, fined or sued, many adults will continue to sell and give alcohol to youth. Unfortunately, many adults believe nothing is wrong with teens drinking alcohol. It is seen as a right of passage. But these adults are ignoring the facts-youth who drink alcohol are more likely to die in a traffic crash; be a victim of murder, rape, or assault; to commit suicide or drown; have a baby; drop out of school; or face other physical or social problems. Many policies have been identified to discourage adults from selling or providing alcohol to teens. These policies can help keep alcohol out of the hands of teens, and thus reduce the amount of alcohol consumed by youth.
Policies and practices are needed to prevent licensed alcohol establishments from selling alcohol to people under age 21. Many communities are beginning to conduct compliance checks and pass administrative penalties. A variety of other policies can be implemented to deter adults throughout the community from illegally giving alcohol to teens. One such policy is beer keg registration. Another example is the social host liability law which allows third parties to sue individuals who have illegally provided alcohol to youth who then injure or kill someone after consuming the alcohol.
The above strategies are critically important to support the prevention work being done by schools, the faith community and parents-and it is also important to understand that the longer we can keep young people from gaining access and using alcohol, the less likely that the individual will have problems with alcohol as an adult.
Finally, if we want to reduce teen drinking and alcohol-related problems, we need to work together in our communities and throughout our state to encourage policymakers to implement and law enforcement agencies to enforce these policies.