Municipal Alliance Investigates New Tool to Combat Underage Drinking

In June of 2000, a law was enacted giving municipalities the power to pass ordinances making underage drinking on private property a crime.

Now, the Lacey Township Municipal Alliance is investigating adding such an ordinance to the toolkit in the fight against teen drinking in town.

“It’s not going to solve the problem of underage drinking but it’s another tool that can be used,” said Heather Scanlon, Municipal Alliance Coordinator.

The law allows towns to pass ordinances that fine violators $250 for the first offense and $350 for any subsequent offense. The court also could suspend or postpone for six months the driving privileges of the defendant, if convicted.

The Alliance plans to present the Township Committee and Police Chief with sample ordinances to consider.

“We want to make sure they see this is something a lot of other municipalities have adopted,” said Scanlon.

The Partnership for a Drug-Free New Jersey conducted surveys in 2007 and 2009 to see which towns in the state had enacted the private property ordinance and found of the 455 communities that responded, 305 had enacted a local version of the law.

In Ocean County, 13 towns said they had passed an ordinance, eight said no and 12 did not respond.

For the Municipal Alliance, the ordinance is part of its campaign to make parents more aware of the liabilities of allowing those under 21 years of age to drink on their property.

“We want to make parents realize this is not something they want in their homes,” said Scanlon. “Also, a lot of parents don’t know if someone underage drinks in their home, they’re responsible. Taking their car keys is not enough.”

New Jersey has a social host liability law that says if a guest in your home consumes too much alcohol and then goes out and injures someone in a motor vehicle accident, the person injured in the crash can recover damages from the party host.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports that although drinking by those under the age of 21 is illegal, people aged 12 to 20 years drink 11 percent of all alcohol consumed in the U.S. In the CDC’s 2009 Youth Risk Behavior Survey, 42 percent of high school students said they had drank some amount of alcohol during the past 30 days, 24 percent binge drank, 10 percent drove after drinking alcohol and 28 percent had ridden with a driver who had been drinking alcohol.

Scanlon said the Alliance has no specific timeline for consideration or passage of any ordinance.