You Must Be Over 21 to Drink in This Living Room

By Michele Oreckin

Officials in Stratford, Conn., convened a group of middle and high school students last year to quiz them on their attitudes toward alcohol. The officials were dismayed, if not surprised, when the teens reported that they thought alcohol, unlike tobacco and other drugs, was largely harmless, that binge drinking among their peers was habitual, and that drinking enough to pass out was funny. But the officials were perhaps most displeased to hear that the place kids most often got drunk was their own or their friends' homes and that some parents either provided alcohol or looked the other way if teens brought it to drink in the backyard or basement.

Spurred in part by that information, the Stratford town council is considering an ordinance that would allow police to enter a private residence if they suspect someone under 21 is consuming liquor, even if adults are present. Dubbed the house-party ordinance, it has been adopted in 43 of the state's 169 municipalities, but in Stratford it has split neighbors between those who see the measure as a way to curb underage drinking and those who argue that it undermines parental authority and violates privacy rights.

Most teens still do their drinking when adults aren't around. But many parents have concluded that teen drinking is inevitable, and given the options, they prefer to have their kids drink at home under adult supervision rather than in a park or parking lot. Some parents even play host to "tent" parties, at which they confiscate car keys and provide a place for kids to spend the night. Public opinion, however, seems to be against that approach, and state and local governments are beginning to enact laws designed to stem underage drinking by targeting adults. Adults face six months in jail, for example, under a law passed in Kansas in 2003, if they allow anyone under 21 to drink in their home (an exception is made for giving one's child beer). A similar bill is pending in Wyoming. In Connecticut, enthusiasm for house-party ordinances is picking up momentum, with 22 towns jumping on the wagon in the past 11/2 years alone. Legislation has also been proposed to adopt a statewide law.

Proponents of the Connecticut ordinances say they address a loophole in the state law that makes it a crime for anyone under 21 to drink on public property but does not prohibit drinking in private homes. "If police go to a home and look through a window and see a kid drinking beer, there's nothing they can do unless they're invited in," says Craig Turner, vice chair of the Connecticut Coalition to Stop Underage Drinking (CCSUD), which has been a major force in pushing for the ordinances. "And even if they manage to get invited in, the only thing they can do is ask the kids to pour the liquor out or nab a kid if he creates a disturbance when he leaves the house." Under the house-party law, drinking by anyone under 21 on private property is a crime. Police can enter a home and issue citations and fines to both minors and any adults present whether or not they provided the alcohol. The provisions differ slightly from town to town, but the fines generally range from $50 to $100, with a first offense considered an infraction and the second a misdemeanor. Exceptions are made for kids who drink when their parent or legal guardian is present, but even if teens have their parents' permission to drink at a friend's house, they are in violation if that parent is not on the premises.

Barbara Ellison, who lives in Glastonbury, which in 1999 became the second Connecticut town to pass the ordinance, says she doesn't allow her son Tim, 17, to drink, and she likes knowing that other parents can't undermine her decision with impunity. "Despite what they think, parents often can't control what goes on in their home once kids start drinking," she says. "If teens drink, they usually drink to excess. And you can ask for their keys, but they have a spare or give you a key that isn't even to their car." Ellison speaks from painful experience. In 2002, a local parent supervised a tent party at which kids supposedly surrendered their keys. Nevertheless, several of them left the home at 3 a.m. and drove to the apartment where Ellison's son Doug, 20, lived apart from his parents. All the young people continued to drink, and later that morning, when Doug went to buy a soda at a local market, he crashed his car and died.

Other supporters of the ordinance point out that driving is not the only potential danger posed by teen drinking. "With alcohol come violence and sexual assault. Most of the rapes we investigate involve alcohol," says Lieutenant Kenneth Bakalar of the Stratford police. "Parents don't even know what is going on in their basements."

Marsha Rosenbaum, director of the national teen substance-abuse organization Safety First, acknowledges that underage drinking is an urgent issue, but she argues that ordinances like the one proposed in Stratford won't resolve the problem. "For the past three decades, we have been trying to get our kids to abstain until they're of age, and we've failed to do that," she says. "If we say they can't drink in our home, they'll just find somewhere else, somewhere more dangerous."

Other specifics in the house-party ordinances have people concerned, such as what exactly constitutes reasonable cause on the part of police. Concedes Turner of the CCSUD: "The core issue of the debate for people who oppose it is, What gives police the right to come onto their property? How do they know that if they're coming in for one thing, they won't try to find something else?" Turner maintains that police will merely respond to concerns brought to their attention by "responsible citizens," not snoop around in people's backyards.

Members of the Danbury town council still aren't convinced. After debating a house-party ordinance last month, they voted unanimously to send it back to the subcommittee to be rewritten to give greater recognition to parental authority. Joel Urice, a council member, calls the proposed ordinance "Orwellian" and says that while the town's intent is to stop binge drinking and unsupervised house parties, "this doesn't get at the problem. Instead, it usurps parents' rights to raise and manage children in the way they see fit in their own home." He mentions, for example, that if a teenager visits a grandparent and wants to have a glass of wine with dinner as he customarily does at home, it would be against the law. And he is equally troubled by the nonspecific nature of what would constitute "reasonable cause" in those situations. "If police go up to a house and look through a window and see a bottle of wine on the shelf and a minor in the home, that would be enough to let them enter the home," he says.

Some opponents of the house-party ordinance are particularly displeased that the measures make no distinction between young people under 18 and those 18 to 21. "We've got men and women 18 years old who are serving their country abroad," says Ben Nolan, president of the Danbury town council, "but if they came back and wanted to have a beer in their own home, that would be prohibited." In the meantime, the battle over teen sobriety and the right to privacy rages on. o