Supports underage drinking ordinance

Iam writing in response to last week's article by Vincent Todaro ("Man Says Police Were Wrong to Enter House," Sentinel, Jan. 31) regarding East Brunswick's underage drinking on private property ordinance.

There are two points of that article that need to be clearly separated. The first is the accusation from Tim Ayers that police entered his home unlawfully or improperly. This is a matter for the police department and possibly the Township Council to investigate. However, as the article correctly points out, the underage drinking ordinance "does not allude to the rights of police officers to enter private residences." That is a probable-cause issue, not an ordinance issue.

The most significant point for the community to examine is the assertion by Mr. Ayers that the underage drinking ordinance is "overly harsh in its punishment and too broad in its scope." Here, I would beg to differ.

The ordinance is actually very narrow in its scope and provides multiple exceptions for appropriate reasons. The behavior that this ordinance specifically targets is teenage drinking parties. By punishing adults for providing alcohol to minors, other laws target the supply side of the equation. This ordinance closes the longstanding loophole in the law that held adults liable for providing alcohol tominors but provided no personal consequences for youths who made the choice to drink.

This new ordinance provides consequences that, for the first time, will likely have a real and immediate impact on reducing the demand side of underage drinking. Why? While many high school students aspire to the "adult" behavior of drinking alcohol, the personal freedom afforded by their driver's license is significantly more important.

In addition to being the chief executive officer of the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence of Middlesex County, I teach an addiction policy course for Rutgers University. When discussing this ordinance with my students, many of whom drank when underage, I have found that the consensus for the past three semesters has been that this is the first policy that would likely affect their behavior and that of their peers.

I commend East Brunswick for not only passing but enforcing this important measure. By doing so, East Brunswick joins 10 other municipalities in Middlesex County and nearly 200 across the state that are implementing comprehensive policies to reduce the harms associated with underage drinking.

Steven G. Liga

Chief Executive Officer and

Executive Director

National Council on Alcohol and Drug Dependence (NCADD)

of Middlesex County Inc.

East Brunswick