By Lynndi Lockenour
Underage drinking happens everyday. According to the Students Against Drinking and Drugs Website (SADD), four out of five students consumed alcohol (more than a few sips) by the end of high school. SADD also reports that two thirds of high school seniors report being drunk at least once by the time they graduated from high school. But where is the alcohol coming from?
While the numbers say the majority is either stolen from home or bought for minors by someone of age, findings here in St. Charles suggest it might be coming from an unlikely source. A recent detail conducted by the St. Charles Police Department last month seems to say that minors may very well be able to walk into local establishments and buy alcohol.
Last month police set up a detail testing local establishments throughout St. Charles to see if they would sell alcohol to minors. Of those 31 businesses tested, 12 failed, selling the alcohol to the posing minor. Of the 12 businesses who sold to minors, eight establishments checked for an I.D. and even after seeing that the person was underage, sold them alcohol anyway.
Chief of Police, Tim Swope said the problem of underage drinking has been going on for years, but he hopes with new actions he is taking against establishments who repeatedly sell to minors, the situation will get better. “Some of the same places that were known for selling to minors when I was younger still have clerks who are allowing minors to buy alcohol now,” he said. “That is absolutely unacceptable.”
Every year, Swope said, St. Charles residents can almost count on seeing a young person die as a result of underage drinking. “The simple fact is that accidents involving alcohol and young drivers often lead to serious injury and sometimes even fatality,” he said. “That is why we must stop these establishments from selling alcohol to underage individuals.”
Swope is currently one of three people serving on a board that reviews liquor license violations. He said the plan is to suspend the licenses of establishments who repeatedly sell to minors. “We don’t want to punish someone who might have one bad clerk,” he said. “The idea is that the places who continue to do this over and over again need to be punished.”
Tough action, such as taking liquor licenses away, Swope hopes he will get business owners to make checking for identification mandatory every time. “This is not something we wanted to do,” he said. “But hopefully it will open people’s eyes and make them realize that this cannot continue.”
For now, Swope said each of the 12 establishments who sold to minors during the police detail will receive a letter informing them that next time it happens, their licenses could be taken away. Chief Swope would not release the names of individual establishments who violated the law.
This type of detail work to catch businesses that sell to minors is typically only conducted a few times a year. However, Swope said the number of details will increase. “After finding that nearly 40 percent of the businesses we entered were willing to sell to minors, I think it’s something we need to focus on more,” he said. “This problem has plagued many communities, but I want us to be on the fore-front of stopping it before it happens here in St. Charles.”
