Our View: SHO' nuff

SHO ’nuff
Is this what we need? A “social host ordinance”?
A number of cities are adopting such laws, including Santa Rosa, Petaluma and Rohnert Park in Sonoma County. Some laws even call for criminal penalties – jail time – but all assign liability to the host of a party where underage drinking laws have been broken or adults have engaged in excessive drinking. Some people have been prosecuted successfully under these laws and, in at least one case, even imprisoned for their role in serving alcohol to underage teens.
Who can argue with the premise that underage drinking is bad? Apparently, some do, as teens in Sonoma, as elsewhere, can gather at private homes and drink with the acquiescence if not endorsement of the parents. “So long as it’s our house,” they may say, “where we know they’re safe.”
We desire neither to judge those parents nor to proscribe their approach. Many parents, though, feel strongly that abstinence for underage youth is the better path, and among them are, we presume, the supporters for the social host ordinances.
Do we think the Sonoma City Council should adopt such an ordinance? Well, we’re tempted because we endorse, in this case, the goal of the legislation. But we’re also hesitant because we fear the use of government to enforce moral judgments, no matter how laudable the behavior desired or how despicable the behavior prohibited. At some point, the behavior can become dangerous to others, that point here being the moment a teen who’s had anything to drink gets behind the wheel of a car. Only at that point should the government have jurisdiction.
The danger of letting government regulate what goes on in our homes is that, once inside, can the temptation be resisted to regulate other aspects of our lives, “in the public interest”? Second-hand smoke is one possibility, and while we’ve all laughed at talk of government controlling what we eat, the national obesity numbers are so alarming that it’s entirely plausible some such regulations may soon emerge, perhaps at the national level.
We commend the push last spring by a number of nonprofit groups here in Sonoma to achieve a higher level of voluntary compliance with the drinking laws. They promoted a “Parent/Community Pledge,” reprinted next to this column. This pledge is great, encouraging parents to make a commitment beforehand to keep events at their homes free of alcohol.
Now if only parents knew which other parents felt likewise. As a community service, local nonprofit CommonBond Foundation has announced a new Web site on which it will post the names of parents who have signed this pledge. It’s purely voluntary, of course, but if your child is headed to a party at the house of “a friend,” you can protect your child by checking the site, at safeparty.info, to see if those parents have agreed to be present and visible hosts.
It’s vastly preferable, in our view, for parents to recognize their common interest in this matter and to work together as a community to protect Sonoma’s teens, as well as themselves.