Could it be about saying "no?"

Would you provide alcohol for your kids and their friends if it meant keeping them off the streets and out of bars? Susan Reimer thinks that she might consider making just such a "pact with the devil" if it meant keeping her daughter safe. What about just saying no - and stop enabling a lifestyle that sees drinking as a necessary part of life? But no:


Anheuser-Busch has begun a public service campaign this fall titled, "Prevent, don't provide."

It is aimed at parents who provide their underage children with alcohol or allow them to drink in their homes. According to the beer maker, two-thirds of teens get their alcohol from their parents or other adults, including derelict characters willing to take their $5.

I understand why such a campaign is important, but do you understand how parents like me might make pacts with the devil? How it stops being about legal or illegal and starts being about something far more frightening?

I was never one of those parents who served beer to underage kids or who let them have parties in my house. But do you understand how I might have been? How I might happily have traded a six-pack for a set of car keys and the guarantee that everyone would be sleeping it off in my basement?

Do you understand how I might want to be the den mother on a spring-break trip to good, old, boring Florida? Do you understand that sometimes it isn't about legal? It is about living.


I am not anti-drinking; in fact, I think our draconian laws regarding alcohol are detrimental to our children's attitudes toward drinking. I think parents ought to make the decision as to whether their children are allowed to drink a glass of wine at the dinner table - it really is not any of the government's business how we choose to teach our kids about alcohol, as long as we are not harming the rest of society by unleashing little drunkards on said society. Which, by the way, is the current situation despite the laws. I would never, however, consider providing alcohol to kids still under the supervision of their parents. I can't imagine how I would react if someone did that with my kid...well, maybe I can. I was so angry when I read this column, I imagined things like lawsuits and prosecuting to the fullest extent of the law. Why can't we parents support each other in teaching our kids to be moral and temperate instead of caving in to the culture? I guess Susan provides her daughter with a prescription for the pill and clean needles.

Sheesh.

Click on the title.

---Katie