http://pacpub.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=18352663&BRD=1091&PAG=461&dept_id=425716&rfi=6
05/17/2007
South Brunswick to target under-age drinkers
By: Paul Koepp , Staff Writer
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Ordinances would make it easier to punish teens and those who supply them with alcohol.
Trouble could be brewing for underage drinkers due to two proposed ordinances soon to be considered by the Township Council.
One of the measures would require registration for keg purchases, while the other would allow municipal judges to suspend or postpone for up to six months the driver’s license of any underage drinker caught on private property.
The ordinances are part of the township’s effort, led by South Brunswick Stop Underage Drinking Zone, to raise awareness about alcohol use by minors as graduation and prom celebrations approach. However, the ordinances will not be introduced until after a public hearing at 7 p.m. on June 18 at the Municipal Building, meaning they will not be approved and take effect before mid-summer.
Steve Liga, executive director of the Middlesex County branch of the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence, said his group is working with SUDZ to promote the ordinances because they would hold accountable both underage drinkers and those who provide them with alcohol.
The private property ordinance would close a “huge loophole” that allows young people to drink on private property without fear of getting more than a slap on the wrist, he said.
“This is the first really significant initiative that could have an impact on underage drinking,” Mr. Liga said. Eight towns in the county have already adopted the measure.
“If you take away a kid’s driver’s license, that’s a huge deal,” he said. “The date they get their license is probably even more important than the date of their graduation. All it will take is for a couple of these parties to get busted and a couple licenses suspended, and the word will get out.”
The other ordinance would require every keg sold in the township to be labeled with its point of sale and an identification number, so that any keg found when police bust a party can be traced back to the purchaser.
SUDZ, a partnership of community members and agencies whose mission is to prevent alcohol use by anyone younger than 21, aims to keep youth safe by alerting them to the emotional and physical consequences of drinking alcohol.
Sue Nissenblatt, the township’s teen health coordinator, said that SUDZ hopes to raise awareness about underage drinking by promoting the ordinances.
“Kids are going to be celebrating (at the end of the school year) and some parents may have a tendency to look away,” she said. “But it’s illegal and dangerous, and a lot of people aren’t aware of all of the consequences.”
Cleo Lowinger, the advisor for Students Against Destructive Decisions at South Brunswick High School and a member of SUDZ, said SADD is taking steps to address teenage drinking.
“We’ve had meetings with prom chaperones and a series of speakers” on drug and alcohol issues, she said. As in past years, the group also put a crashed car on display on the high school’s front lawn to combat what she called the “it can’t happen to me mentality” among young people.
“It puts the reality in their face of what can happen and reminds them to make safe and healthy decisions,” Ms. Lowinger said.
The next SUDZ meeting, where parents can get statistics about underage drinking and help the group brainstorm ways to address the issue, will be May 23 at 7 p.m. at the Municipal Building.
For additional information, or if you plan to attend the meeting, e-mail sbsudz@aol.com or call 732-329-4000 ext. 7237.
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I tried to prune this piece but it is tightly written. Full of statist unconstitutional trash, but tightly written. I can’t excerpt it without destroying the flow. There’s not a line in the story that I don’t want to comment about. It really is a load of “barbara streisand”! Argh!
Let’s start with the jurisdiction of the Township Council. Where do they get off “punishing” other people’s children? AND, I think it is a well established principle that any type of “drug regulation” is doomed to failure. Didn’t we learn from alcohol prohibition that if people want something the marketplace will supply it. Nothing that the Township Council can do will reverse this. And, I’ll drop back on my favorite line:
If it’s such a good idea, why do people have to be forced to do it?
Now about registration for kegs. Yet another diktat. Where does anyone get the right, authority, or force to insert themselves into the transaction between consenting individuals. Only the gooferment thinks that it, like the movie tyrant Kings of England, can issue Royal Orders to be followed across the realm. It’s egotisitical at best and stupid at worst. Where do the local komisars get off telling a local business that they have been dragooned into being the “keg police”. It has to be violation of the Fifth Amendment. And, probably the Third, Fourteenth, the right of privacy, and a ton of principles in common law. Of course, since the Township’s jurisdiction ends at the township boundary, so this dank is a tax imposed on the “booze barns” inside the township. Of course, if the law breaker, shops across the street in a different Township or a different County, well then the local business just loses business.
And, don’t get me started about “private property”.
William Pitt the Elder once expressed a British freedom ideal: “The poorest man may in his cottage bid defiance to all the force of the Crown. It may be frail; its roof may shake; the wind may blow through it; the storms may enter, the rain may enter, but the King of England cannot enter; all his forces dare not cross the threshold of the ruined tenement!”
So why does the gooferment seek to go by law, regulation, and enforcement where the Crown’s officers can not go.
On to “the township’s effort, led by South Brunswick Stop Underage Drinking Zone”. Who empowered the Township to get involved in this effort? And, are we mixing public, private, and “religious” efforts. I know SBTwp is funded with the Gooferment’s stealing for people, “SBSUDZ”, with a private aol email, appears not to be SBTwp. And, animosity to “drinking” is a characteristic of the Salvation Army, Southern Baptists, or AA. All in the “religious” business. So, I have real objections to this one.
Now some evidence of why gooferment can NOT do anything right. The objective is alcohol and proms, but it won’t be in place until late summer. Please. So the komisars are passing diktats that won’t be ready in time. Hilarious.
Now we have a “middlesex county branch of ncoaadd”. Why do I smell my taxes being burned doing social work? And, it just generates all sorts of questions about the proper demarcation between public law and private purpose.
Private property is not a “huge loophole”! It is the Constitutionally recognized right.
Great, another a dank, adopted by lots of towns. That must make it right! And, it “could have an impact”. Great, who’s measuring? And, when it doesn’t work, like all gooferment diktats, how do I get my rights back. Diktats never get repealed, just added to.
And a mixture of agencies and groups muddles what is law and what is “religion”!
Are we serious?
Argh!
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