Buying Booze For Minors

Socially acceptable? Or alternate reality?

Published on October 18, 2007 By Tova7 In Current Events

I heard a recovering alcoholic/drug addict complaining about school nurses yesterday.

He has a “young teenage” daughter who is having problems getting Tylenol from the school nurse for hangovers

Was he complaining about the underage drinking?

Nope.

Know why?

BECAUSE HE BUYS IT FOR HER!!!!

He says, “I’m a realist. Teens are gonna drink. I’d rather she do it in the safety of my home than out on the street.”

Even though he is a recovering alcoholic, even though it is illegal, even though he is a practicing Mormon and won’t even drink coffee himself now, even though he is a national talk radio show host and has a show on CNN, he still says the issue isn’t that he buys booze for his kid, but that the school refuses to give her Tylenol for a hangover.

Am I in an alternate reality?

This whole thing aired on his talk radio show yesterday, which I caught in the van as I often do. You can sign up and listen for yourself at Glennbeck.com.

I kept waiting for the punch line.

There wasn’t one.

The whole “they are gonna do it anyway, better do it at home” argument is mind boggling.

If you go on a diet. What is one of the first things you do for success? GET RID OF ALL THE JUNK FOOD IN THE HOUSE.

I drank as a teen, but not half as much as I wanted too. It wasn’t always easy to get booze. I needed someone to buy it for me. I didn’t want to waste my hard earned minimum wage money on it. And it was never CONVENIENT. Plus, I didn’t want to get grounded for drinking because it was not allowed in the group home or when I lived with my aunt.

Granted, those little road blocks didn’t keep me from drinking completely, but doing it took effort and time and money. It took risk. Risking punishment, risking losing my money to an unscrupulous booze buyer, risk of getting caught by the police, and for kids with loving parents, risk of their disappointment. Not things all teens are willing to do for a drink.

Mr. Beck has essentially removed all the little built in road blocks. He buys it. He brings it home. He lets her do it. He even complains (on national radio no less) when other adults won’t cater to her hangovers.

WHAT?

Does this seem nuts to anyone else?

Will my kids drink as teens?

Probably, but not because I condone it.

They will know its breaking the family rules, is punishable, won’t be intentionally funded by me, is illegal, and if they want to do it…they have to figure out how. I am not going to show them. They'll have to risk it all on their own.

Perhaps in taking those risks, they will learn some lessons which make them believe it’s not worth it. Or maybe just looking at the risks will be deterrent.

Mr. Beck traveled the road of alcoholism and drug addiction. Now he is paving the way for his daughter and not with DNA….with accessibility, with condoning it, with enabling her to do something self destructive, with removing every risk associated with drinking as a teen.

Wow.

Just. Wow.

Comments (Page 2)

Tova7

on Oct 19, 2007

My wife is from Wisconsin, where underage drinkers are allowed to drink under supervision of their parents. For the most part, it works.

But I'm with the consensus here in that if she is drinking enough to have a hangover, there is a definite problem!

I think what bothers me THE MOST about this....he talked about it on national radio. How many people listen to him and think he's wonderful? How many people will "try" his way to see if it works? In short, how many kids will suffer from his revelations?

Hmm, well college might be a nice place for these.

Zoo...you really need to get a girl friend...hahaha.

Jythier

on Oct 19, 2007

You say that like there's a store, and he can just go and pick one up. Well, you can with girls, but not really girlfriends... the long term cost is unreasonable.

Zoologist03

on Oct 19, 2007

Zoo...you really need to get a girl friend...hahaha.

Tell me something I don't know.

~Zoo

dynamaso

on Oct 19, 2007

When I was 15 or 16, my mother gave me a ride to a friend's party. Before we got there she asked if I was going to drink anything. I told the truth and said I might if there is something there to drink. She asked me what I would like to drink. When I told her, she detoured to a bottle shop, brought me a few beers and a small bottle of Bacardi. She said she wanted me to ONLY drink what she'd given me and nothing else. Her logic was if she knew what I was drinking and how much, she would worry less.

I stuck to my word, had the few beers and shared the Bacardi with friends. I didn't drink anything else and I certainly didn't end up drunk or with a hangover. I still remember the trust she gave me that night.

SSG Geezer

on Oct 21, 2007

Kind of different from when my friend's parents would buy the keg, set it in the garage, and chill in the basement till the party was over. Now they would be arrested for that. seems that we never got falling down stupid, threw up or got arrested after the parties with parental supervision. Just the non-supervised ones. I guess Glenn B wasn't actually supervising.

Tova7

on Oct 22, 2007

What is the legal drinking age in Australia Dyno? I understand different cultures have diff ideas about drinking. But the fact it is harmful to teens, and causes brain damage doesn't change with societal whim.

I would never do this with my sons for lots of reasons. It's unhealthy. It's addictive. It's illegal. With my luck, some kid would get drunk off the Bacardi I bought, kill someone and then not only would I go to jail for contributing to the delinquency of a minor, I'd get sued. Heh.

Yeah. Not worth it to me. They can wait until they're legal!

Tova7

on Oct 22, 2007

Kind of different from when my friend's parents would buy the keg, set it in the garage, and chill in the basement till the party was over

Yeah. One of my gal pals in hs mom owned a bar. Her mom was an alcoholic and used to buy us kegs for just about every party. We DID get stupid drunk...haha. But her mom was right there beside us. After awhile though, it became sorta tragic and I opted out. Nothing like watching a middle age woman, sloppy drunk at a party of 17 year olds, up on a table stripping to make you re evaluate drinking....hhahahahaha

Moderateman

on Oct 22, 2007

Ok this might sound strange but what the heck, My oldest daughter Bobbi was 18 at the time and came to me and said " I want to try pot, but with all the strange stuff happening, {people adding things to pot like Mdma or angel dust things like that} she was scared to buy it on the streets, after I came down from the ceiling we talked about it, I tried to talk her out of it, but she was determined to try it, so I got it for her from one of my old sources { I had quit long before this} then safe at home I rolled her a joint and let her puff away, needless to say she got very very high {she was smoking growers own, some cannabis indicus that has quite the wallop, she thought every thing was funny, got the munchies and crashed, next day I asked her what's up? Bobbi said it was fun, but she did not like the loss of control, she was done with it. Was I wrong to do this? I don't think so. I was keeping her safe in my eyes at home where no one could take advantage of her. She is 32 now and has never smoked again.

dynamaso

on Oct 29, 2007

The legal drinking age is 18 but my point was that if she hadn't done this, maybe I would have tried to get some alcohol myself or drank someone elses and ended up in a sorry state or worse.

But she did do this and I did survive it without hurting myself or anyone else. At the time, my friends thought it was really cool too, so it didn't hurt my social status. What it mostly taught me, though, was that sometimes adult activities are deemed so for a reason. I didn't drink again until I was well past the legal age.

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