It’s graduation party season, which means social host laws that hold parents responsible for teenage drinking are back in the news. Last week, two Harvard Medical School professors were arrested because teenagers were found drinking at their daughter’s graduation party, though they said they did not see the alcohol.
How effective are these laws, which can impose fines or jail time for parents? Some parents believe it is better to have teenagers party at home so that adults can monitor the event and take away the car keys than have kids drinking elsewhere unsupervised. Is this a bad idea? Is there an alternative to social host laws?
- William Damon, Center on Adolescence, Stanford University
- David Jernigan, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
- Ruth C. Engs, professor, Indiana University
- Richard Bonnie, professor of law and medicine
- Angela Dills, economist
- David S. Anderson, professor, George Mason University
- David J. Hanson, professor, State University of New York, Potsdam
- Marsha Rosenbaum, Drug Policy Alliance
- James F. Mosher, lawyer
Condoning Bad Behavior
William Damon is a professor of education and director of the Center on Adolescence at Stanford University. His books include “The Moral Child,” “The Youth Charter” and, most recently, “The Path to Purpose.”
Parents who sanction teenage drinking parties are making a huge mistake. These parents are encouraging the very behavior they are attempting to control. Even worse, they are communicating disrespect for legal authority to young people who are just forming their attitudes about how to behave in society.
Laws on underage drinking in this country are clear. A parent certainly has the right to disagree with these laws; and discussions about such disagreements with children can foster critical thinking and civic awareness. But the parent’s first message to a child must be that we are obliged to obey our society’s laws even when we disagree with them.
At the same time, legal enforcement of social host laws should be used sparingly as a last resort. It’s heavy-handed, intrusive, and risks undermining relations between parents and children.
A far better way is the youth charter approach that I have written about. Parents together assemble a list of homes that commit to hosting parties without alcohol or drugs. This list defines the territory that children are free to party in.
Of course creating such a list requires parents to actually establish a sense of community around the needs of their children. I’d suggest that this is a social good in itself –- a social good that is in too short supply in today’s society.
The Myth of How Europeans Drink
David Jernigan is an associate professor in the Department of Health, Behavior and Society and director of the Center on Alcohol Marketing and Youth at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. He has worked for the World Health Organization and the World Bank as an expert adviser on alcohol policies.
According to the Surgeon General, there are 5,000 deaths per year in the U.S. among young people under 21 as a result of alcohol use. No parent wants their child to have an alcohol problem, be involved in an alcohol-related crash or sexual assault, fall off a balcony during spring break, or suffer from alcohol poisoning.
Yet parents are strikingly ignorant of what the research literature suggests will be effective in keeping our children out of trouble with alcohol.
Many parents feel that young people will be safer if we keep them at home and supervise their drinking, or teach them to drink by having them drink with us. They shore up this conviction with a mental image of drinking patterns in European countries, where they assume that younger drinking ages and drinking with parents decreases youth drinking problems.
In fact, the most recent research suggests that the opposite is true. Researchers followed 428 families in the Netherlands over a three-year period, and found that young people whose parents permitted drinking at home were more likely to drink more, to drink out of the home, and to develop alcohol problems over time.
A recent study of 1,388 young people and their parents in Chicago followed the children from ages 12 to 14, and found that those who reported at age 12 receiving alcohol from their parents at home were significantly more likely by age 14 to have been drunk or to have had five or more drinks at a time in the past two weeks.
Young people who start drinking before age 15 are five times more likely to develop alcohol problems. Keeping alcohol away from young people seems to have a clear result: it delays initiation of alcohol use.
This is what the comparison with Europe really shows: countries with higher drinking ages (like the U.S., Sweden, Norway and Iceland) have much lower prevalence of drinking in adolescence (measured in surveys of 15-16 year-olds that are comparable across countries) than countries with lower drinking ages. The U.S. Surgeon General’s 2007 Call to Action to Prevent and Reduce Underage Drinking reported that in nearly all the European countries surveyed, young people engaged in binge drinking more often than in the U.S.
If providing alcohol to our children in the home is not the answer, what can parents do?
First, we need to look at our own drinking behavior, because children imitate the alcohol consumption of their parents. Second, we should support 21 as a sensible drinking age, given what we have learned from our national history and about adolescent brain development.
Third, we need to stay actively engaged with our children about alcohol use at least through the freshman year in college — research has shown both that the young people who were drinking in high school are the most likely to have alcohol problems in college, and that parental engagement is critical in helping young people make the transition from high school to college without getting into trouble with alcohol.
Today, alcohol companies spend at least $4 billion per year on marketing, much of it placed where young people are far more likely to see it than their parents. New products are more attractive to youth and more dangerous: “alcopops” are most popular with the youngest drinkers, and alcoholic energy drinks, which pre-mix alcohol with caffeine and other stimulants, create a high-risk population of wide-awake drunks.
The failure of alcohol taxes to keep up with inflation has made alcohol much more accessible to kids because it is now often cheaper than juice, soda or milk. Parents need to remember that today’s young people live in a far different world than they did, and protect them accordingly.
Learn Safer Drinking Habits
Ruth C. Engs is professor emeritus at Indiana University. She has researched university student drinking patterns for over 25 years in the United States and on the international level. She is currently researching health reformers of the Progressive Era.
“Social host” laws vary from state to state and on the whole they are largely unenforceable. High school graduates drinking at graduation parties has been a “rite of passage” among youth in the United States for decades. It is unlikely this behavior will change as it is ingrained in our culture.
It is better to have young adults consume alcohol within the confines of a home where they can be monitored and driven home by parents or designated drivers, as opposed to having them go to unsupervised parties to get drunk. In many cultures outside of the U.S. parents routinely serve their children alcohol at home. Wine and beer are considered part of the diet.
In my opinion, the age of alcohol consumption in the United States should be lowered to age 18 in controlled environments. These include restaurants, anytime or anyplace with parents, or in pubs where alcohol is consumed on the premise.
However, I am opposed to allowing youth go to retail stores to buy booze to take home to get drunk because this is not responsible drinking. Parents of high school graduates certainly should not be condemned for holding graduation parties in a safe home environment in which drinking behaviors can be monitored.
Don’t Depend on Laws Alone
Richard Bonnie is Harrison Foundation Professor of Law and Medicine and Professor of Public Policy at the University of Virginia. He chaired a study on underage drinking for the National Academy of Sciences, “Reducing Underage Drinking: A Collective Responsibility.”
In 2003, the National Academy of Sciences issued a report, “Reducing Underage Drinking: A Collective Responsibility,” concluding that an essential component of a successful strategy is changing the attitudes and behaviors of adults.
Adults often facilitate or enable underage drinking directly by supplying alcohol to young people, by failing to take effective precautions to prevent it, by sending the message that alcohol use is to be expected, and by not adequately monitoring and supervising their children’s lives, generally.
The committee that wrote the report recommended an adult-oriented media campaign to educate parents and others that the negative consequences of underage drinking go beyond drunken driving, and that they have an obligation to do something about it. Although some steps in the direction of such a campaign have been taken over the past 5 years, it has not been implemented on the necessary scale.
Efforts to target underage drinking have to address social availability through parents, friends, and strangers, as well as commercial access. We need to change social norms about underage drinking and erase the mistaken impression that parents are protecting their children by facilitating their use of alcohol.
Some courts have expanded so-called “dram shop” liability principles so that they apply to non-commercial servers, including social hosts, employers, fraternities, and others that are not licensed to sell or serve alcohol.
Under social host liability laws, adults who provide alcohol to a minor or serve an intoxicated adult can be sued through civil actions for injury caused by that minor or intoxicated adult.
There is very little research on the effectiveness of such laws, and what evidence exists is conflicting. The conflicting findings may reflect the lack of a comprehensive program to make social hosts aware of their potential liability, which reduces the deterrent effect of these laws.
Media campaigns should be an integral part of implementing social host liability laws. As a practical matter, however, social host liability is probably not the most effective legal tool for deterring parental complicity in underage drinking and reinforcing the desired social norm. Imposing a criminal sanction, especially a jail sentence, on a parent who hosts a drinking party for minors, may be more likely to attract media attention than an a less publicized civil award of damages.
Still, states may want to consider enacting or strengthening civil social host liability statutes that allow negligence-based civil actions against those who provide alcohol to a minor who subsequently causes injury to others.
Making Hosts Responsible
Angela Dills, a visiting lecturer at Wellesley College, will be an assistant professor of economics at Providence College this fall.
Most minors obtain alcohol from adults of legal drinking age. Most underage drinkers typically drink alcohol in their own or someone else’s home. Social host liability laws for minors aim to stem this access to alcohol and its accompanying drinking and driving.
These laws penalize adults facilitating under-aged drinking if that drinking damages a third party. Parents who throw parties for their children, however, cite safety reasons as part of their motivation for hosting parties, preferring their teens and their teens’ friends to drink in a supervised and safe locale.
Both sides of the debate suggest that social host laws affect drunk-driving, albeit in opposite directions. How effective are these laws?
I analyzed drunk-driving fatality data for 18 to 20-year olds from the Fatality Analysis Reporting System. Over the last 30 years, an increasing number of states have enacted social host liability laws that impose penalties on adult hosts when the imbibing party is a minor.
Over the same period, drunk-driving fatality rates among 18 to 20 year-olds have fallen substantially. However, in those states adopting social host liability, drunk-driving fatality rates for minors fell 9 percent more than states without these laws.
Drunk-driving fatalities may decline because youths drink less, drive after drinking less, or both. Using data from the Behavior Risk Factor Surveillance System, I find little or no effect of social host laws on the drinking behavior of 18 to 20 year-olds. However, social host liability laws are associated with a reduction in how frequently 18 to 20 year-olds drive drunk.
Social host laws may not restrict under-aged access to alcohol but they do encourage adults to improve their monitoring of under-aged drinkers and to pressure those drinkers not to drive.
Saying ‘No’ Is Not Enough
David S. Anderson is professor of education and human development at George Mason University.
Social host laws are needed to communicate clearly that underage drinking is not acceptable. While a parent may have the intention of limiting a teenager’s (and his or her friends’) exposure to drunk driving by hosting a party, exposing teenagers to alcohol even in that setting can result in harm, like alcohol poisoning, sexual abuse, violence, drunk driving and more).
Underage drinking, though decreasing in recent years, is still extensive, as over 25 percent of high school seniors nationwide report drinking 5 or more drinks in a row at least once in the previous two weeks.
While social host laws and other regulations make a difference I believe we also must have a comprehensive approach that emphasizes prevention, personal responsibility, skill-building, and early intervention in addition to laws and policies. We also need to find out why adolescents drink — and then address the underlying reasons for their decisions about alcohol use or non-use.
George Mason University’s research project, Understanding Teen Drinking Cultures in America , found that nearly half of the reasons (48 percent) teenagers gave for getting drunk were social, such as to bond or fit in with peers who are drinking; another 24 percent of the reasons were emotional, like the need to deal with boredom and stress.
Our national telephone poll showed that parents are more likely than teenagers to think that teenagers get drunk out of curiosity and do not know their limits. From our focus groups, we found that parents are often unsure how to talk to their children about alcohol use.
Teenagers and parents both report that alcohol education programs offer messages like ‘don’t drink’, ‘don’t drink and drive,’ ‘alcohol use is illegal under 21.’ But our research shows that the messages of “don’t drink” aren’t sufficient to address teenagers’ motivations for alcohol use and heavy drinking.
Permit Drinking With Adults
David J. Hanson is a professor emeritus of sociology at the State University of New York, Potsdam.
Parent can prohibit drinking in their home and unintentionally drive their high schoolers to drink unsupervised in the woods, fields, older friends’ apartments, and who-knows-where-else. The results are sometimes driving while intoxicated and tragic alcohol-related crashes.
Or parents can host gatherings in which they supervise and control the behaviors of the young people who attend to protect their safety and well-being. Some states already permit parents to serve alcoholic beverages to their own offspring under their direct supervision. Every state should do this. Federally-funded research has shown that drinking with parents can reduce overall alcohol consumption and alcohol-related problems.
But no state permits a parent to serve alcohol to the minor of another, even with the explicit permission of the parent or guardian. This prevents parents from legally hosting gatherings at which underage attendees consume any alcohol, even if they obtain permission to act in loco parentis.
Parents should have the right to extend to other parents permission to act on their behalf with regard to alcohol on conditions they specify so as to protect their young people. Societies that permit parents to serve alcohol to their adolescents tend to have fewer alcohol-related problems. People in these countries would agree that it’s better to learn to drink in parents’ houses than in fraternity houses.
It’s Not the Drinking, It’s the Driving
Marsha Rosenbaum is a medical sociologist and the founder of the Safety First project at the Drug Policy Alliance.
Recently, a couple (both on the faculty of Harvard Medical School) were arrested under a “social host” law in New Hampshire because teenagers were caught consuming alcohol at their daughter’s graduation party.
Such social host laws were created in a well-meaning effort to prevent teenage drinking by making parents vulnerable to prosecution. But are they effective?
Most would agree that teenagers would be better off if they abstained. But annual surveys consistently show that nearly 80 percent of high school students have consumed alcohol by the time they graduate.
Let’s face it, whether or not we approve, alcohol has become a normative part of American teenage culture. Another sobering reality is that the most lethal aspect of underage alcohol use, by far, is drunk driving.
The prospect of teen drinking, combined with driving to and from parties, is terrifying. It is the primary reason that parents open their homes, take the car keys and provide an automobile-free, if not necessarily alcohol-free, gathering.
I worry that out of fear, frustration and desperation, social host laws created to eliminate underage drinking by targeting otherwise law-abiding, responsible parents, may actually reduce teen safety.
When I ask young people about social host laws that eliminate the availability of parentally supervised homes where they can party, none say they’ll simply stop drinking. Instead, they say they’ll move the party to the street, the local park, the beach or some other public place. And they’ll get there by car.
While we encourage and promote sober gatherings, parents should have a fallback strategy that makes sure drinking and driving don’t mix. Arresting parents for trying to keep their teenagers safe is not the answer, and may ultimately do more harm than good.
Shift Social Norms
James F. Mosher is a leading scholar in the field of alcohol policy and the law. He has provided expert consultation to community groups, policy makers, and law enforcement on social host laws.
Social host laws (sometimes referred to as house party laws) hold individuals responsible for underage drinking on property they own, lease or control. They recognize that the problems associated with underage drinking parties (a high-risk setting for binge drinking, drunken driving, sexual assault, and other forms of violence) are community problems that require a multifaceted public health approach.
Research is absolutely clear on this point: restricting the availability of alcohol to teens saves young lives. So does increasing alcohol taxes. Educational programs are important, but on their own have little or no effect on teen drinking, in part because of the massive advertising and marketing budget of the alcohol industry undermining the pro-health educational messages.
Many parents and other adults don’t realize how easily teen parties can get out of control. Even with the best intentions, adults who allow teens to party on their property are not only setting a poor example but are also endangering the safety of those attending as well as neighbors and others in the community.
They are also making it more difficult for other parents who want to protect their children from the risks associated with binge drinking.
When properly crafted, social host laws are an appropriate and effective strategy for reducing underage drinking and shifting social norms.
Many communities treat violations as a form of public nuisance, holding the host responsible for costs associated with law enforcement and emergency medical response. This approach is more readily enforceable than social host laws that carry criminal penalities.
Public nuisance law requires property owners to take steps to maintain their property so as not to endanger community health and safety. For example, swimming pools must have fences and toxic substances must be removed.
Similarly, we should expect homeowners to take reasonable steps to insure that out-of-control teen parties are not occurring on their property. For example, if parents are going out of town, they should not leave teenagers in charge during their absence.
This is an invitation for disaster, even with the most responsible teenager. Social networking can easily result in 200 or more drunken, uninvited teens on the property. Law enforcement officials in communities across the country routinely report just these types of incidences. Parents should alert neighbors, friends or law enforcement to monitor the property during their absence and/or make other arrangements for the supervision of their teenagers. The last thing parents should do is give into social pressures by letting their homes become the site for underage drinking parties.
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