from victimless to corpse in nothin flat
http://www.inrich.com/cva/ric/news.apx.-content-articles-RTD-2007-10-21-0287.htmlhttp://www.inrich.com/cva/ric/news.apx.-content-articles-RTD-2007-10-21-0287.htmlRichmond Times Dispatch (VA)
BY BILL MCKELWAY
TIMES-DISPATCH STAFF WRITER
"You can be 10 years old and drink in Virginia," said Beth Straeten, a spokeswoman for the state's Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control.
Surprised?
At a time when some in the community are ex- amining the role of alcohol in the wake of traffic deaths, injuries and broken futures, Virginia remains one of the many states whose laws specifically tolerate a parent providing alcohol to an underage person. Eleven states, Virginia among them, say providing alcohol to an underage son or daughter can only occur in the home. Twenty other states say parents can provide alcohol to their children anywhere.
The Virginia exception was passed during the 2006 legislature. It drew only two negative votes and won the signature of Gov. Timothy M. Kaine. Kaine's office declined to comment on the law last week. A spokesman for Attorney General Bob McDonnell also declined to comment.
"It is not for us to decide whether or not this law should be on the books," said ABC Chairwoman Esther H. Vassar, stressing her department's role in enforcing laws and educating the public. "It is a policy matter for the General Assembly."
But to others, the law is a startling incongruity.
"When I learned last year about that, I couldn't believe what I was reading," said Emporia resident James Webb, who worked 35 years as a clerk in state liquor stores. "Here we are being told not to sell liquor to anyone under 21, and I'm learning that the law says as long as you have a parent nearby you can be any age at all to drink. It's a double standard. It makes no sense."
Betsy Gallagher, president of Deep Run High School's Parent Teacher Student Association, said the exception is a major obstacle in trying to control underage drinking.
"That law is exactly why we have such a big problem," she said. "If you write a law that sends that kind of message to the public, it is no wonder that parents and children are receiving a gray message."
But the law is no quirk; nor is Virginia unique. Only 19 states prohibit parents from providing alcohol to underage people, according to the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism.
The Virginia law was backed by key groups that fight for tighter drinking restrictions; the sponsors of the bills, state Sen. Ryan T. McDougle, R-Hanover, and Del. Brian J. Moran, D-Alexandria, are longtime, dependable advocates of stiff drinking regulations.
"In Virginia, we're dealing with a climate that very strongly focuses on the ability of parents to control their own child inside the home," said Jeffrey Levy, a lobbyist for Mothers Against Drunk Driving in Virginia.
The political reality, he said, is that the law represented a compromise and reined in longtime Virginia laws that were even more lax.
"Under the old law, all you needed was to be in a residence to legally serve an underage person," said Levy, who lost a son in an alcohol-related crash. The law created a loophole that allowed parents to avoid prosecution for overseeing drinking parties, especially in cases where partygoers were between 18 and 21.
"It was a loophole you could drive a truck through; now the loophole is something you could maybe drive a bicycle with training wheels through," McDougle said last week.
"I think it takes care of 99.9 percent of the problems we see" with underage drinking parties, said Levy, who emphasized that each child must have his or her parent or legal guardian present. Fraternity parties and residential parties, typically attended by only a few parents or an unrelated adult, are now illegal, he said.
But when Craig Lloyd, executive director of North Carolina's MADD chapter, was told about the Virginia law last week, he said he was amazed.
"You can drink if you are underage?" he asked.
MADD members in that state last year won approval for a state law effective last month that makes it illegal for anyone under 21 to consume alcohol, Lloyd said. "It took three years to get through, but it puts North Carolina in a no-tolerance position, which is what law enforcement wants."
The law gets rid of earlier, more-difficult-to-prove statutes that required proof of possession, Lloyd said.
. . .
Virginia's adherence to laws that tolerate underage drinking helps feed the dual perception that alcohol is appropriate for anyone even as millions of dollars in advertising campaigns push no-drinking dictums for teens.
"You are going to have kids drinking at home and then go next door and feel like it's OK to drink there," said Webb, the retired ABC store clerk. He's still troubled by a man who told him he had to buy the liquor for his son's 18th birthday party.
"I should have reported the guy, but it was closing time. I just didn't do it. I should have," Webb said.
The parental-oversight law remains on the books, too, as surveys by the American Medical Association and others show that parents are more tolerant of underage drinking than their underage children.
As teenagers are inundated with anti-drinking messages at schools, churches and by their own organizations, they also are finding far more lax attitudes at home from their own parents, said ABC special agent Dan Durrette. His district includes the Short Pump area where a 16-year-old driver charged with underage drinking also faces a manslaughter charge in a fatal New Year's Day crash shortly after midnight.
The fight over enforcement and parental rights is a familiar one to western Henrico resident Mary Hudalla, who helped lead a fight against underage drinking in suburban Detroit; she raised two boys in a community where teenage drinking parties were overlooked by police.
"There was one where drunk teenagers were literally falling over the hoods of the squad cars and vomiting. The cops wouldn't even get out of their cars," she said.
But neighbors in Farmington Hills, a city of about 80,000 people northwest of Detroit, got together and pushed for a city ordinance that now holds a property owner responsible for illegal, underage drinking at the residence or property, even if the owner is not present.
"It helped a lot," said Hudalla, who is quick to comment on her perception of Virginia's slow-to-change ways. "I have people asking me to go to Daughters of the Confederacy meetings, but no one seems to be really doing anything about the drinking and getting directly involved."
Last week, however, more than 600 parents and students gathered at Deep Run High School near Short Pump to examine positive ways to erase underage drinking. Sarah Ann Haislip, the 16-year-old charged in the fatal New Year's Day crash, is a Deep Run student.
The crash is one of a series of alcohol-related incidents in the area that have taken a half-dozen lives in recent years. Police are investigating the role a teenage drinking party New Year's Eve in the Twin Hickory neighborhood near Deep Run may have played in at least two crashes, one of them Haislip's.
A lawyer for the family which owns the home said in a Times-Dispatch interview this month that the parents were not at home during the party and were unaware that drinking may have occurred.
Without laws on the books in Virginia like the one in Farmington Hills, it's unclear what action authorities can take against an absent homeowner where underage drinking occurs.
Meanwhile, legislators this session are considering changes to blood and breath test laws. Other proposals would mandate a six-month minimum suspension of a driver's license when someone provides alcohol to an underage person and in cases when a judge defers sentence on an underage person charged with possession.
"We need to be able to stand up and tell groups that these penalties will happen, not just that they might happen," said Levy, the MADD lobbyist in Virginia. He said bills requiring license suspensions of underage persons always bring out opposition.
"Guess where the opposition always comes from?" he asked. "The parents. They can't stand the idea that they will have to start driving their child around again."
Absent adults not charged in DUI case
Prosecutor says Va. law makes it hard to in teen parties
Sunday, Oct 21, 2007 - 12:09 AM
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By BILL MCKELWAY
TIMES-DISPATCH STAFF WRITER
A nine-month investigation into where and how Henrico County teenager Sarah Ann Haislip obtained alcohol that figured in a fatal New Year's Day crash will not result in additional charges, according to Henrico Commonwealth's Attorney Wade Kizer.
The owners of the home where 16-year-old Haislip and other students celebrated New Year's Eve weren't present, and Virginia law makes it almost impossible to associate illegal activity with a non-present homeowner, he said.
"The law is that you have to be present or be able to prove that someone is an accessory, an active participant before the fact, in order to bring charges" against a homeowner, Kizer said in an interview after Haislip was sentenced Friday to serve almost a year behind bars.
"We are confident that we know what occurred, but Virginia law doesn't recognize that the homeowner is guilty of a crime," Kizer said.
Gary LaClair, an airline pilot whose Twin Hickory home was the site of the New Year's Eve party that Haislip attended, has said in interviews and through his lawyers that he and his wife were not present for the event and were only aware that some school friends of their son were planning to spend the evening.
LaClair and his wife were in Middlesex County at their waterfront home, called Point of View, LaClair has said. Neighborhood sources have said that as many as 50 young adults may have been at the party in the 4200 block of Cobblestone Way.
And when police raided another adult-absent gathering at the LaClairs' Twin Hickory home in March where underage drinking allegedly was taking place, LaClair said police were singling out his family for harassment and that there was no proof liquor had been consumed on his property.
Today Haislip, formerly a Deep Run High School student, is serving almost a year behind bars for her role in a high-speed, alcohol-related crash early New Year's Day that took the life of Wesley Hunter Taylor, a friend-to-all bartender who also had been drinking that night.
Family and friends of the deeply sad, doe-eyed Haislip, now 17, and of Taylor, who was 29, almost filled Henrico's Circuit Courtroom 3 on Friday in a proceeding that centered as much on the worrisome presence of alcohol in teenage lives as it did on a young girl's fatal misjudgment.
Allison White Twente alluded to the pervasiveness of teen drinking in testimony Friday.
The clinical psychologist said Haislip lived in a world where drinking and a lack of parental influence have become a norm.
It was only the crash that brought Haislip's conduct to public attention that her lawyer described as suddenly shifting her from aspiring soccer star to "infamous" teenager. Prior to the crash, her school record was virtually unblemished, investigators have said. She told them she had three beers but registered almost double the adult legal limit of alcohol in a blood test.
"I never wanted to be in a position of where I was an example for people. But that's where I am," Haislip said in court Friday, tearfully apologizing to Taylor's nearby family. She spoke of an identity and culture that she now realizes was childish and stupid.
In the days after Haislip's arrest, the Internet coughed up images of Haislip, beer in hand, lounging with friends at a house party. Internet chatter among her friends -- before word of the crash spread -- joked about the inebriated condition of partygoers New Year's Eve.
Efforts to attack the alcohol-related youth culture stepped up in the wake of Taylor's death. Henrico police have made hundreds of arrests focused on underage drinking. The crackdown has been relentless and is ongoing.
Some parents have been charged in the wave of arrests -- they were present at the parties -- but there are far more examples of empty homes suddenly filling with partying teens. Police have few avenues to prosecute adults, Kizer said.
The house party phenomenon is no stranger to Michael Sparks. It was a key element of the underage-drinking culture in Vallejo, Calif., a city that was being overrun with teenaged drinking issues some 15 years ago.
"It was a huge problem," said Sparks, who was part of efforts there to use grant money from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to develop ways to combat underage drinking and other substance-abuse problems. "Our research was able to show a wide range of problems" ranging from increased incidents of date rape, to alcohol-related traffic fatalities, to school performance issues, to mental health problems, Sparks said.
Sparks now travels the country lecturing and helping communities develop underage alcohol countermeasures through the auspices of the Fighting Back Partnership.
An important breakthrough, he said, was moving away from efforts to criminalize non-present adults whose homes have been used by underage drinkers.
Instead, Vallejo adopted an ordinance -- called a Social Host ordinance -- that allows the city to assess the costs of a police response to a home against the homeowner.
"The results have been excellent," said Lt. Reginald Garcia of the Vallejo police department. "Basically, we don't have a problem with the teen house party thing anymore."
Garcia said a first response to a home might produce a warning to the homeowner that any subsequent calls to police will be followed by a bill for their services. The usual on-site arrests can be made for clearly illegal activity, but absent homeowners can be dealt with later, even by mail.
"You got a party with underage drinkers and it takes 10 officers to respond and you charge $10 an hour for each hour it all takes, and that starts to add up," he said.
"It's definitely changed the party scene," Sparks said. Big, out-of-control parties are almost a thing of the past.
But Sparks said teens continue drinking, only in smaller, less evident groups among peers they trust.
"The key is broad coalition building in a community where there is a substructure of accountability," he said. A uniform anti-drinking message needs to be reinforced at home, school, church, by businesses and by people in the community who are respected, he said.
Kizer, for one, said the ordinance approach is worth looking at. But it likely will require changes in state law that allow adoption of special ordinances by local governments.
Yesterday, Three Chopt District School Board candidate Eileen Davis, whose daughter graduated from Deep Run High School and knew Taylor and Haislip, said the ordinance approach and coalition effort should get a long, hard look.
"What I hear is an effort to help provide a safe and secure environment for our kids; that's a good thing," she said, stressing that she's not convinced that Haislip's conduct was the teen's normal behavior or that of most teenagers she knows.
Contact Bill McKelway at (804) 649-6601 or
bmckelway@timesdispatch.com.
