Last week, I posted on a bill that would remove a provision of our law that allows minors to drink in a bar with the approval of a parent, guardian, or spouse, and at a bartender’s discretion. See, Bill Targets WI Law Allowing Minors to Drink – Wisconsin State Journal.
I received a reader’s note, supporting a change in the law, so that those under 21 could not drink in a bar this way, even with parental permission and a bartender’s approval. Thanks very much for writing — much appreciated.
Here’s the letter:
Hey, just so you know….there was at least one incidence of a crime based on this regulation. It was a man who had taken a minor into a bar and given her alcohol, saying she was his daughter. Turns out she wasn’t. They had sex, she got pregnant. He was charged. I tried to look it up, but had no luck. But I remember the story very clearly.
Now, he could have just as well gotten her drunk—and pregnant—in the privacy of his own home. He did not need a tavern to do it, and this law will not prevent it. That is clear.
Still, the contention that no crime ever occurred because of the law… thought you’d want to know. More regulation is bad, but this is just a very bizarre law. So outside the norm to be a regulation in and of itself.
It is a truth now held to be self-evident: bad thing for impressionable teenagers to spend significant amounts of their time in bars, worse thing for their own parent to buy them drinks.
To legislate parents encouraging their minor children to publicly drink is just strange. Parents have the ultimate say in their homes, for sure.
But engaging in this bizarre social construction in the workplace and place of business is without precedence… where else do we say that social norm (right or wrong) supersedes state and federal law? Can you think of another example?
How should the tavern or bar owner interpret this? I’m not sure where I fall on this, although I support the bill. But given the toll that alcohol abuse takes on the citizens of the state, I would not fall on side side of light-heartedness.
My 2 cents worth.
Adams replies: Well, now I know of at least one crime that took place — and might surely have taken place anyway — because a minor drank in a bar. I didn’t know of any, previously. (I don’t know the circumstances of this crime, but I’ll not contend on those grounds.)
What’s the original condition of a society – free conduct subject to limited regulation, or prohibited conduct, subject to limited permission? A free society favors conditions in which what the law does not prohibit, it permits.
I can’t avoid noticing that the reader assumes that in this case, what law doesn’t permit should be prohibited, that is, the natural state of affairs should be restriction. Why, asks the reader, “So outside the norm to be a regulation in and of itself.”
I would have considered this law an exemption from greater regulation (regulation, that is, where no minor could ever drink).
We’ve reached a point where legal prohibitions seem the norm, and exemptions from regulation seem odd, almost unnatural.
So the reader asks, “where else do we say that social norm (right or wrong) supersedes state and federal law?”
Drinking in a bar only after reaching 21 years of age is not a natural law, command from God, or in any way inevitable condition. States once allowed drinking at 18, the same age we now allow citizens to vote, or serve in combat defending America.
As I’ve said, I have never availed myself — or anyone else — of this provision, a law that’s really an exemption from a more restrictive law (no drinking until 21, under any circumstances).
As for light-heartedness about alcohol abuse, I’ll be plain: the solution to alcoholism will not be found in government regulation. Not taking away some chances to drink, or taking away all alcohol. I drink very little, and would hope that others drink only occasionally, too. I’m not willing, though, to pretend that any number of laws have solved the problem of alcoholism, because it’s not been solved.
Prohibition didn’t stop alcoholism, and the belief that if we just make the substances illegal they’ll go away is false, and absurd. Prohibition will not shape character against drunkenness; parents teaching moderation will.
What is both irritating and risible is listening to the relatives of alcoholic celebrities clamor for more government restrictions and prohibitions, as though more restrictions might possibly have dissuaded their deceased love ones from drinking. New laws and restrictions should serve a greater purpose than as a salve for a grieving relative.
If one can drive at 16, vote at 18, and die defending his or her country at 18, where the state even claims the right in theory and past practice to initiate conscription if necessary, then I see no reason that someone under 21 can’t take a drink in a bar with parental permission and a bartender’s discretion.
