Wrong approach on underage drinking?

It is the season for high school graduation parties and that means parent-hosts trying to keep graduate-guests from the alcohol. Drink and you are grounded. Drink and drive and the world as you know it will end.

Our kids have had that second message hammered into them from a young age: Don’t drink and drive. I think the vast majority get it. That’s the good news. The bad news is that the Naperville and Lisle police are sending the opposite message. I have seen it first hand and I have heard the stories. Eighteen year olds who have been drinking decide to walk from one party to the next and are arrested on charges of intoxication and taken to jail. Parents hosting a party see that some of their guests have been drinking and want the kids to sleep over, but kids and parents alike know that every car parked on the street overnight will be ticketed.

Of course, drunk and disorderly pedestrians of any age should be arrested, but 18-year-olds walking at night should not be stopped without cause and forced to prove they haven’t been drinking. What happened to Officer Common Sense? If a kid walking at night is visibly drunk, drive him home or call his parents to pick him up. Issue a ticket.

Overzealous police who unfairly target teens are changing teen attitudes toward police — and the attitudes of a lot of parents as well. Cops aren’t the ones to turn to for help; they’re the ones to run from. Eventually, these policies will put drunken teenagers behind the wheels of cars.

I am already hearing a new and dangerous message from parents trying to cope: “Don’t walk to the party if you’ve been drinking.”

Joe McKeown

Naperville