Wasted Potential

Bethany Denman was a promising student. She was a member of the honor roll and planned to be a physician. Some say that her recent 15 year sentence for killing Amy Meron, a local piano teacher and mother, while driving at .30 blood alcohol content is too harsh, and that it will prevent her from being a full contributing member of society. The truth is that she already made choices that prevented her from reaching her full potential.

One poor choice was to abuse alcohol, pills, and marijuana. Even with all of her education, her brain was not fully formed. It was still developing its capacity to retain knowledge and use judgment. Regardless of whether or not our laws see her as an adult, her brain was not fully developed; and thanks to the abuse of alcohol and drugs it will never be the fully functioning tool that it could have been.

Her drinking was nearing a lethal dose even without the pills and marijuana. She would have been experiencing near total loss of motor functions, inability to stand or walk, vomiting, incontinence, and potential unconsciousness. By drinking at those levels while abusing drugs she was risking serious damage to her body potentially resulting in liver, pancreas, and bone damage; not to mention cancer and heart disease.

Denman’s attorney argued that “throwing her in jail for 20 years . . .  is not going to stop the alcoholic that’s drinking right now and ready to get in their car.” He argued that as an honors student and an applicant to medical school she “isn't the type of careless sociopath one might expect on a Mothers Against Drunk Driving billboard.”  To this perspective I must argue that the average drunk driver is not an alcoholic. Offenders are not sociopaths; they do not necessarily have poor education or low socioeconomic status. While I agree that Denman’s sentence will do little to deter future drunk drivers, we cannot allow the problem to be so undervalued as to warrant probation. The victims of this crime were not treated differently because of their own background or education, and perpetrators of this crime should not be given more credit for their standing in the community.

 In order to prevent future fatalities and wasted potential we must not rely on enforcement alone. This problem is community wide and therefore requires a community response. Everyone should be involved in some way or another whether it is educating your kids on the dangers of alcohol, or calling the police when you see an intoxicated person preparing to get behind the wheel. Prevention, advocacy, education and community awareness are key to solving this problem.

For information on alcohol and substance abuse in Bexar County contact the Circles of San Antonio (COSA) at 210-225-4741 or by email at coalition@sacada.org. For more information on the work our coalition is doing to reduce drunk drinking in your community check out our Facebook page or follow our Twitter account @circlesofsa.

Safe Underage Drinking: A Contradiction in Terms?

Recently announced research regarding alcohol in the home has caused quite a stir among parents. News 4 WOAI reported on a study published in the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs which found that teens who drink with adult supervision have more drinking-related problems than their peers whose parents do not allow them to drink. This is not the first study that shows that the “harm-minimization strategy,” the theory that parents can reduce the negative effects of alcohol abuse by supervising alcohol use among teens, is an ineffective method of reducing alcohol abuse. The study which was conducted by Drs. Barbara Morris, Richard Catalano, Min Jung Kim, John Toumbourou and Sheryl Hemphill of the Center for Adolescent Nursing, Healthy Youth Development Prevention Resource Center at the University of Minnesota, delved into several different factors that contributed to teen alcohol abuse. The research, which was performed in Washington State, found that, “the relationship between favorable parental attitudes toward alcohol use and ninth-grade alcohol use and alcohol related harms was mediated by opportunities to drink in an adult-supervised setting in a way that increased risk.” (McMorris et al. 425) The study noted a significant positive link between adult supervision, alcohol use, and harmful effects.

Other research addressing this issue was performed by Raymond Vet and Drs. Regina Van Den Eijnden, Dike Van De Mheen and Ad Vermulst of Utrecht University and published in the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs. This study addressed other practices that encouraged or discouraged teen use. The researchers’ findings encouraged parents to remove alcohol from the home if possible, and to enforce strict rules about drinking. Alcohol availability was linked to alcohol use and alcohol-related problems, however when strict parental rules regarding alcohol were in place alcohol related problems were prevented. The study also examined parental communication and found that conversations about alcohol were not always successful, and this may be due to the fact that conversations were not approached in the most constructive way.

These studies discourage parents from assuming that their child is aware of their negative opinion of underage alcohol use. The research shows that setting strict clear rules regarding alcohol is necessary to prevent underage illegal use. Parents should educate themselves on how best to broach the subject, and should do so early on based on the early age of alcohol initiation in Bexar County (12 years old is avg for first alcoholic drink). Parents should not believe that because they allow drinking with adult supervision, that minors will avoid drinking without adult supervision. If possible, alcohol should be removed from the home, or at least not be in a location that provides easy access to underage drinkers.

Unfortunately many parents still believe that it is a fact of life that teenagers will drink and that by providing a “safer” location for this behavior, parents are acting responsibly. The research, not to mention the law, does not support this practice. It is illegal in this state to provide alcohol to someone who is not your child; however, due to the way that this crime is prosecuted many individuals go free because the courts could not prove that the individual intended to supply alcohol to a minor.  Cases such as that of Audrey King, a teenager who was killed in a alcohol related traffic collision following a party at the home of former Texas Chief Justice Tom Phillips, show us that some adults who deny knowledge of drinking in their home are not held legally liable for providing to minors. In San Antonio, 41% of SAISD students admitted in the Texas School Survey that they obtain alcohol “at parties”. If we are going to take the problem of underage drinking seriously, it is time that we do something about the source of the alcohol – parties. One strategy to prevent these parties and hold individuals accountable for providing to minors is a social host ordinance.

Social host ordinances are local laws that hold individuals who own property where a minor is served alcohol civilly liable. Under these ordinances a parent could be fined regardless of whether or not they were at the home at the time of the party. An apartment owner who allows raucous underage drinking parties to occur on his property could also be held accountable. These ordinances are not established simply to punish offenders, but to encourage parents and property owners to take the necessary action to prevent these parties from occurring. These ordinances change the norms of a community related to underage drinking, enforcing the idea that underage drinking is wrong and that there are consequences for ignoring the law.

If you are interested in learning more about social host ordinances and how they could be implemented in your community, come to the San Antonio Council on Alcohol and Drug Abuse offices on Thursday, June 9th at 2 pm. Please contact the Circles of San Antonio at 210-225-4741 if you have any questions.