Two Anaheim events involving underage drinking are being used to amplify Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's signing of legislation today that holds adults in California
liable if youth they serve alcohol to are injured
or killed.
The signing comes during the 12th Enforcing Underage Drinking Laws Annual National Leadership Conference, the nation's largest gathering dedicated to youth drinking
prevention continuing through Friday at the Anaheim Marriott.
Last night at Disney's California Adventure came the second event.
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In fact, we brought it to you earlier this morning:
“California becomes one of just a few states with a
social host liability law that hold adults accountable for underage
drinking,” reads a statement from conference organizers. “Underscoring the significance, the
signing comes one day after a 20-year-old who Anaheim police say had
been drinking fell 25 feet from a Disney theme park ride, injuring
himself.”
Of course, it is not yet known how the 20-year-old man got the alcohol he is alleged to have consumed. Did his parents get him toasted? Did a 7-Eleven clerk fail to ask him for ID? Did he use his Club 33 membership to suck a few down inside the park?
The conference, which is sponsored by the U.S.
Department of Justice's Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency
Prevention, coincides with the 24th annual
meeting of the National Liquor Law Enforcement Association, which
brings together law enforcement experts from throughout the U.S. and Canada.
Its goal is to encourage community-based approaches to reduce “underage drinking and the
negative consequences that often result” by bringing together more than 2,000 alcohol enforcement
officers, judges, prosecutors, community members, and young people
sharing “success stories on the best ways for communities to
confront underage drinking.”
The more than 100 workshop topics range from teen house
parties and college drinking to athletes and alcohol and underage
driving under the influence offenders.
Demonstrations include a mock party bust with
teens pretending to be drinking.Young people are also being invited to join cops on ride-a-longs targeting teen drinkers and businesses failing to card booze buyers.
Underage drinking kills and injures
more young people than all other illegal drugs combined, according to the
National Institute on Alcoholism and Alcohol Abuse.
Go here for a complete list of the conference
workshops and sessions.
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.