For years, law enforcement has targeted retailers who sell alcohol to minors. But the shift has focused recently, as police and health officials take aim at parents who provide booze to underage drinkers.
The “Parents Who Host, Lose the Most” campaign, spearheaded by the Tazewell County Health Department and local law enforcement is designed to raise awareness about the dangers and consequences of providing alcohol to teens, said Sara Sparkman, community relations manager at the health department.
Banners have been hung recently in places such as high school hallways, outside police departments, along busy roadways and in football stadiums. The banners include the campaign’s logo as well as a phone number and Web site people can use to report underage drinking parties.
The campaign is funded through a grant from the Illinois Department of Human Services.
“We want to raise awareness that it’s illegal for kids to drink and illegal for parents to provide alcohol,” Sparkman said. “We’ve found lately that some parents believe that if kids are drinking at home, they can control it, and that’s not the case.”
Data from last year’s Illinois Youth Survey, administered to students in all the county’s high schools, show that teens are getting alcohol from home, whether or not their parents know about it.
About 12 percent of Tazewell County sophomores and about 13 percent of seniors said their parents give them alcohol. About 11 percent of sophomores and 12 percent of seniors said they get alcohol from home without their parents knowing.
“The data is startling,” Sparkman said.
One of the primary reasons teens should not drink, even if their parents are supervising, is because their brains are not fully developed, including the part that makes decisions, Sparkman said.
“When you throw alcohol into the mix, their decision-making ability is affected, and they often do make bad choices, unfortunately,” Sparkman said, noting the large number of alcohol-related teen deaths in Tazewell County that have occurred in the past few years. “Those fatalities really illustrate that teens need more brain development and more life experiences before they make the decision to drink.”
Sparkman said underage drinking is a problem throughout the year, but the health department wanted to emphasize its message as students head back to school, and weekend house parties become more prevalent.
Washington Police Chief Jim Kuchenbecker said both unattended drinking parties and parent-hosted drinking parties are problems throughout the city.
“A lot of the parties we go to, the parents aren’t around,” he said. “But I know for a fact there are parties where parents have been there and condoned it. If they didn’t actually go to the liquor store and buy the alcohol, they at least knew it was there and did nothing to stop it, and that’s just not acceptable.”
Besides being irresponsible, providing alcohol to minors can come with hefty consequences, Kuchenbecker said. Adults who host drinking parties can be charged with unlawful delivery of an alcoholic beverage, contributing to the delinquency of a minor and even child endangerment, all Class A misdemeanors, punishable with up to one year in jail and/or a $1,000 fine.
“If we have parents who were engaged in something like this, we would be very aggressive in prosecuting and seeking jail time,” Kuchenbecker said.
Excuses that teens are safer when their drinking is supervised are unacceptable, the police chief said.
“That seems to be the argument I continue to hear, and it’s a terrible misconception,” he said. “The notion that if everyone spends the night at my house, so they’ll be OK is a ludicrous argument. Unfortunately, we hear about alcohol poisoning far too often. Kids are killing themselves because they drink too much, not just because they’re out drunk driving.”
Teens who attend drinking parties but do not drink themselves are not off the hook either, Kuchenbecker said.
“I give them kudos for not drinking, but in Washington we can charge you with patronizing a disorderly house,” he said. “I applaud young people for choosing not to drink, but take it one step further and get out of there.”
To report an underage drinking party, call 1-866-479-2857 or visit www.drunkstopper.com.
Washington, Ill. —
