Coalition Wants Alcohol-Providing Parents Held Responsible

Members of the Steppin' It Up Coalition could urge county council to pass an ordinance cracking down on parents and other adults who knowingly host parties where underage drinking takes place.

“If I'm a neighbor and I know there's underage drinking going on, or if I'm a parent and I know my child is there, can I be charged with anything?” coalition chairman Sam Wyche asked Matt Smith, Alcohol Enforcement Coordinator for the Thirteenth Circuit, at a recent coalition meeting.

Social host ordinances and laws can be used to charge parents who host parties, knowing that minors will be drinking underage.

“Social host ordinances are popping up all over the US,” Smith said. “Our sheriff over in Greenville is looking at drafting one.”

There's already law on the books that says if you rent a motel/hotel room that is used to host an underage drinking party, you can be charged, Smith said.

“It's basically a social ordinance,” he said. “We just need to get one drafted for a house-type situation.”

It depends on the situation whether underage drinkers will be taken in or if their parents are called.

He spoke of a party that included 14-15-year-old drinkers.

“Anybody's who under 17 years old has to be held securely at a juvenile detention facility,” Smith said. “Most of the time, with kids that young, we'll call parents and if you can't get a hold of parents, the only other option is to hold them securely. We'll use tools like alcohol screeners, Breathalyzer. We'll have a kid blow into that. If they seem grossly intoxicated, if they're blowing pretty high. .23, .24, two or three times the legal limit and it seems to be going up, probably the more appropriate setting would be a hospital where they can be monitored to make sure they don't encounter any serious problems. “Generally speaking, if we can get them turned over to a responsible, sober parent, that's where we'll turn them over to if we can,” he continued.

If police can find the person who provided the minors the alcohol that night, “we will take them to jail,” Smith said. “A lot of it has to do with how cooperative they are. If they're mouthy, belligerent, a lot of times they'll talk themselves into a trip to jail.”

Wyche said the coalition could go to county council to ask them to draft a county social host ordinance.

“The parents are getting off easy,” Wyche said. “I know that a lot of those parents know those kids are going where there's going to be booze or worse. They kind of get a pass. They should be at least charged after the fact, if they're caught.”

He said neighbors are often aware of what's going on but don't report it.

“If you see a guy getting robbed, aren't you obligated to call help for the person?” Wyche said. “It's the same kind of thing, they're potentially getting robbed of a future, those kids are. Habits become habits before they realize.”

Wyche has seen firsthand how addictions can derail promising futures. As head coach of the Cincinati Bengals, Wyche led the team to Super Bowl XXIII, where they played against the San Francisco 49ers.

“The night before the game, we have an incident where one of our running backs, an All American running back from Oklahoma, Stanley Wilson, OD'd on crack cocaine,” Wyche said.

Wilson had had problems with drug abuse before.

“He wanted to tell everybody that he could beat this drug,” Wyche said.

Wyche had no choice but to cut Wilson from the team the night before the biggest game of the year. He's said before that he's convinced that the Bengals would have won the game had Wilson been in the roster that day.

He's since discovered that another one of the players on the team had stockpiled some drugs for a post-game party.

“They thought they were going to win,” Wyche said. “Well, we didn't win. A lot of the team – not all of them - knew that there was going to be a party afterward and that there was going to be drugs there. They knew Stanley couldn't say no.”

Wyche said there's a message to the kids in that story.

“That first drink is the killer, man,” Wyche said. “It's the first drink that stimulates something in your brain that's different maybe a little bit, more susceptible than someone else, that hooks you. Pretty soon you become an addict. You have to have it in you all the time. When you start to withdrawal, you'll do anything, steal from your parents, commit a crime, whatever to get high again.”

Cathy Breazeale, Prevention Specialist with Behavioral Health Services of Pickens County, had a message for parents who host parties and provide alcohol for their kids and their friends.

“Sometimes with young people, we want to be their friends so much, like they can't get their own friends,” she said. “If you're an adult, they're using you. I tell people that. 'Oh my child is my best friend.' They're not. You can give to them, but only so much.”

Smith said social host ordinances could help law enforcement.

“It's a useful tool, when we come on to scenes like that, if there's a violation of that county ordinance,” he said. “That might be your foot in the door. It's not piling more work on us, it just gives us a better tool in our toolbelt to hopefully do our jobs a little more effectively.”

Curtis Reece with the Phoenix Center thanked the members of the Greenville and Pickens County alcohol enforcement teams.

“It's a real success story,” Reece said. “Greenville and Pickens, the Thirteenth Circuit, it's really a state and national model. We've got attention from all over the country for what's happened. It's really changing the culture of underage drinking here, and that's saving lives.”

Reece said he could provide model policies that other areas have used to draft their social host ordinances.