$500 for snitching drinking parties

By all means, cops should patrol the roads and stop drunk drivers. Stopping someone from drinking in their home on the basis that they might commit a crime later is ridiculous.

 

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This is a myth. There are plenty of studies showing that "binge drinking" is about as common in most of Europe as it is in the U.S. Just google "binge drinking europe studies" or something similar.

 

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Unless it is actually against the law...

 

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My point was that it generally shouldn't be against the law. Teenagers can and often do drink responsibly. When I was 18-20, my friends and I would often get together and drink beer while we watched movies, played computer games, or did other things at someone's house. Once someone starts actually doing something dangerous (like driving drunk), stop them and punish them. But don't punish someone because that might do something bad in the future.

 

yes i know it is has common here than in the US perhaps this view should come down to parenting, and not dismising drinking has a flat out NO, but giving kids at home a taste of the forbiden fruit

 

I agree. Irresponsible drinking is bad no matter which way you spin it or who is doing it, regardless of age. Encourage teens to practice safer drinking habits. Taking an alcohol education course was required of all entering freshman at my college and originally I thought it was a stupid idea and that no one was going to heed it. But it did have an effect on students drinking behaviors. My school proudly boasted the fact that alcohol related incidents had sharply declined since the program began and even at the parties I went to people were always quoting things that they had learned from the online course and to some extent practicing them. I mean we knew how to help friends who had alcohol poisoning and what happens to the brain during blackouts. I was suprised and kind of still am considering how well drug prevention worked back in elementary school. I think it was the lack of judgment that the program had perhaps.

 

At my own college there was a lot of drinking at parties around campus, but there weren't any serious problems as a result of it. But they decided to crack down on it anyway. The result was that the parties were simply moved off-campus, and many people began driving drunk to get back home when the parties ended. The campus authorities took something that wasn't actually harming anyone and turned it into something dangerous. Any time people start enforcing the rules simply because they are the rules, you run into all sorts of stupid trouble.