Curbs on underage drinking proposed
Posted on Wednesday, September 24, 2008
If a legislative task force has its way, Mike’s Hard Lemonade and other “alcopops” will be pulled off grocery and convenience store shelves as part of an effort to curb underage drinking.
The measure is one of six recommendations released Tuesday in the Task Force on Substance Abuse Prevention’s first annual report.
Another proposal would extend “social host” laws to private residences, which would make parents potentially liable for high-school parties.
The task force also wants to maintain the state’s current legal drinking age at 21 and increase penalties for providing alcohol to minors.
“We’ve tried to come up with something realistic,” said Fran Flener, the state’s drug director. “This is no pie in the sky.”
Flener said the task force hopes its recommendations will lead Arkansans to change their attitudes about underage drinking.
The report cites state and federal statistics showing Arkansas children take their first drink at 12. 5 years old compared with the national average of 13. 2 years.
The social norm in Arkansas, she said, “is that underage drinking is a rite of passage and it’s OK.”
The panel’s 16-page report said that nearly 49 percent of 12 th-graders in the state report drinking at home or at someone else’s home and 57. 3 percent believe that five or more drinks once or twice per weekend doesn’t put them at “great risk.”
One factor in underage drinking is sweet-tasting “alcopops,” said Sen. Bill Pritchard, R-Elkins.
Brands like Mike’s Hard Lemonade, Smirnoff Ice and Skyy Blue are packaged and taste more like sweet soft drinks than liquor, he said.
“I tasted one and I could see the problem,” Pritchard said after the meeting. “Most people don’t like their first taste of beer or whiskey. This stuff they’d drink right down.”
Taxing and regulating such drinks as spirits and requiring that they only be sold in liquor stores would reduce underage access to them, he said.
Andrew Crawford, a registered lobbyist for the Arkansas License Beverage Association, said he hadn’t heard about the effort to re- strict “alcopops” and would need time to study the proposal.
Teresa Belew, a task-force member and the executive director of the state chapter of Mothers Against Drunk Driving, said she hears often from parents whose children drink that “at least they don’t do drugs.”
“Alcohol is often the first drug kids try,” she said.
The fact that nearly half of 12 th-graders report drinking in their home or someone else’s highlights the need for revising the state’s “social host” law to include liability for knowingly allowing underage drinking on one’s property, Belew said.
Recently, some states have examined the idea, supported by some university presidents, to lower the drinking age, arguing that young people old enough to fight in a war and vote should be allowed to legally drink.
In the early 1970 s, many states began to lower their drinking age to 18. That changed in 1984 when Congress voted to penalize states that set the drinking age below 21 with forfeiture of 10 percent of their highway funds. Louisiana became the last state to raise its drinking age to 21 in 1995.
Missouri, Vermont, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Kentucky and South Carolina are among states considering reverting to 18, according to the newspaper USA Today. Pritchard said he had heard “rumblings” about a possible drive to lower the state’s drinking age to 18, but said “from what I hear it’s not going to get much legs.” Formed by the Legislature in 2007, the task force will present its findings to the Legislative Council and the House and Senate interim committees on Public Health, Welfare and Labor, but no date has been set, Pritchard said.
FEEDBACK:
Something to say about this topic? Submit a Letter to the Editor online
