Youth: The Drinking Problem

There was nothing particularly unusual about it, unfortunately: a couple of nice kids, driving home from a couple of good parties, went off the road. She was killed, he was not. Everybody felt terrible. Then last week—three months after the accident—some thing happened that made the sad, unnecessary death of Nancy Hitchings, 17, of Half Mile Road, Darien, Conn., a matter of national controversy. Circuit Court Judge Rodney S. Eielson, presiding over the trial of 18-year-old Michael Smith for reckless driving and negligent homicide, ordered the arrest of 14 adults for serving alcohol at the two parties that Michael and Nancy had attended.

Section 30-86 of the Connecticut Liquor Control Act was clear: Any person, except the parent, or guardian of a minor, who delivers or gives any such liquor to any such minor, except on the order of a practicing physician, shall be subject to the penalties—up to a year in jail and/ or up to $1,000 fine. Booked under this statute were a vice president of the Johns-Manville Corp., a psychiatrist, an Olin Mathieson Chemical Corp. executive, a consulting engineer, their wives and a public-school science teacher who was moonlighting as a bartender at one of the parties, as well as another bartender, two caterers and part-time waiters. Judge Eielson's regret seemed to be that he could not fill Fairfield County jails with parents. "The guilt of needless loss of life is in every living room in this community," he said. "I wish I had the power to get at every parent who is guilty."

All of Darien was stunned to realize that adults could be charged with a crime for serving liquor in their own homes. "A man's home is his castle, isn't it?" was the frequent plaint. Other parents in other areas might be equally surprised to learn that they were lawbreakers too. In many states, the law can be interpreted to forbid any person to serve liquor to an adolescent, whether in public or private. In other states, adults can be held culpable for such an amiable drawing-room practice on the grounds that they have contributed "to the delinquency of a minor."

Party Codes. But in practice, these laws are almost never enforced. "How can I go into somebody's home and find evidence to prove that somebody was serving drinks to a minor?" demanded a Los Angeles sheriff last week. But in supermarkets and commuter trains—and cocktail parties—most of the talk circled a more basic dilemma of a drinking society: Can people be kept away from alcohol until they are 21—and should they be, anyway?