Alcohol

From: Seymour B. SternPresidentMaryland State Bar AssociationThe legal profession joins society in general in its dismay and outrage over the dramatic increase in crime, overloaded court dockets and drunk driving incidents. Attorneys see it every day and are all too aware of the impact it has on innocent victims.The only long-term solution to substance abuse is education. The recommended short-term solution in many alcohol- and drug-related civil matters is treatment. Sometimes, jail must be the answer, but most often, treatment helps the individual and is a solution to correct the individual's abuse problem.

It was April 1978, and singer Judy Collins hadn't had an inspirational thought in four years. She'd been an alcoholic for 23 years — "and I was proud of it. " She'd toured and made records, but she knew the ride she was on — her father had been an alcoholic — and "as long as I was on it, I was going to enjoy every minute. " But in those last four years, she'd been drinking around the clock. Three-black-outs-a-day drinking. Jelly-jars-full-of-booze drinking. So her accountant and her assistant, the only people who would have anything to do with this version of Judy Collins, put her on a plane to a rehab facility.

A Harford County man was arrested and charged yesterday with raping a 17-year-old girl whom he lured to his home after chatting with her on the Internet, authorities said.Dontai Wykee Murrell, 25, of the 2700 block of Long Meadow Drive in Abingdon was charged with second-degree rape of the girl and with furnishing alcohol to minors.Detective Tom Walsh, a spokesman for the Harford County Sheriff's Office, said that the girl and a 16-year-old friend, who live in Harford County, told authorities that they began communicating with Murrell in a chat room Wednesday night.

They have asked a date, found the perfect dress, matched the shoes and made the appointments for hair and nails. But the seniors and their parents at Maryvale Preparatory School must add one more thing to their to-do list before prom night Friday. The all-girls Catholic school in Brooklandville established an unusual pre-prom tradition 26 years ago, when it made an alcohol education program mandatory for students and parents. "Because of all the things going on related to drinking, including a horrific accident, we decided then that we had to do something," said Sister Shawn Marie Maguire, who has overseen the school since 1981.

How do you keep several hundred seniors clean and sober on graduation night?Put them on a boat with no alcohol or other drugs and send it out to sea.That was the strategy behind floating parties on the Chesapeake Bay Thursday sponsored by two county high schools.At C. Milton Wright High School, the Parents Teachers Students Organization helped monopolize most graduates for the entire night, allowing them little opportunity to indulge in the tradition of getting drunk or stoned.The school's commencement was scheduled to run from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m., leaving students only an hour to go home, change clothes and come back in time to board a bus for the Annapolis City dock, where the Harbor Queen awaited their arrival.

Imagine a world where people drank tea or water or an occasional glass of wine…. Where teenagers, college students and their elders went out for dinner or conversation instead of going "out to drink…" Where drivers were sober and dates weren't passed out, not even knowing they were being raped…. Where jealousies might incite passions but wouldn't be fueled into murderous rages by alcohol… Will people ever learn to avoid drinking and its frequent escalation into being drunk, irresponsible, dangerous, unconscious, dead?

Two Georgia players were jailed early Saturday morning on alcohol-related charges less than a week after an embarrassing drunken driving arrest prompted university athletic director Damon Evans to resign. Dontavius Jackson , listed as a sophomore tailback, and sophomore split end Tavarres King were in a Chevrolet Avalanche stopped on a campus road just before 3 a.m., UGA Police Chief Jimmy Williamson said. Jackson, 20, was charged with driving under the influence, leaving the scene of an accident and other motor vehicle offenses.

There are may lessons to be learned from the case of George Huguely and Yeardley Love ("Teammates saw signs of trouble, but failed to act," Feb. 10). Among them is that alcoholism and aggression are real issues that need to be addressed. We all know that alcohol changes the brain, causing some to react in violent ways. For those with prior anger issues, the violence likely intensifies with the addition of alcohol and other substances. Mr. Huguely had consumed 15 drinks on the day of the incident, and other testimony suggests he suffered from anger issues.

After reading " 'Dime-a-drink' tax will save lives, not kill jobs " (Feb. 22) by Messrs. Jernigan, Waters and Cook, I'm left wondering: If taxing alcohol will accomplish the two-pronged benefit of raising revenue for the state while curtailing abuse due to reducing consumption, why stop at 10 cents a drink? Why not double the tax? Or triple it? I'm not on the faculty of Johns Hopkins' Bloomberg School of Public Health, nor am I a professor of public policy at Duke University, but I did take logic in college and the writers' argument just doesn't hold water, beer or any other liquid.

Let me get the straight. The General Assembly has increased the tax on alcohol by 50 percent for all Marylanders to benefit the school systems in Baltimore City and Prince George's County. Yet Baltimore City negotiates with the BTU so that 3,000 paraprofessionals may get pay raises, some retroactive to July 2010, more holidays off and let's not forget spring break for non-school workers. Who negotiated with the union? What a slap in the face to the citizens of the other 22 counties.

If local pharmacists could write the regulations, Marylanders probably wouldn't ever have been allowed to get their prescriptions filled at chain stores like Walgreens and Rite-Aid. Independent video stores probably would have liked to outlaw Blockbuster, just as small bookstore owners probably would have been just as happy if the state had a ban on Barnes & Noble. (For that matter, Blockbuster might like an injunction against Netflix and Barnes & Noble on Amazon.com.) And most of all, Main Street merchants everywhere would probably love a world where Walmart was illegal.

Alcohol is far too attractive and easy to obtain online for kids, says Dr. David Jernigan, director of Johns Hopkins' Center on Alcohol Marketing and Youth . Jernigan wrote a commentary for the Archive of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine to accompany a new report from researchers at the University of North Carolina that documents how easy it is for underage drinkers to make purchases on the Internet. While it's long been known kids could buy alcohol online, this is believed to be the first peer-reviewed study to look at age verification practices of online vendors.

Stop by the Red Rooster, a 10-seat joint just off Main Street in this rural community an hour west of Baltimore, and you can order a burger, some barbecue or the fried chicken that some locals claim is the best on the East Coast. But don't bother asking for a beer to wash it down with. The Red Rooster, like every other business here, is barred by law from selling alcoholic beverages. And that suits co-owner Kevin Miller just fine. The lifelong Damascus resident says the local ban has helped preserve the quiet character of this unincorporated corner of northern Montgomery County.

Baltimore City Councilman Nick J. Mosby (D-District 7) plans to introduce legislation Monday that would ban liquor store owners from selling non-alcoholic goods to people under 21. Mosby said the purpose of the legislation is to prevent teens in Baltimore from developing a habit of entering liquor stores to buy items. He said entering liquor stores is already "normalized" behavior for city youth, and banning the practice could create a demand for other stores to open in city neighborhoods.

I don't know about you, but this weather has made me want to drink. Hoping to will sunshine and cool breezes, I've been ordering every fruity, refreshing cocktail I can get my pasty, white hands on. I yearn for a summer tan, sun dresses, surf, sand, picnics in the park. Perfect timing, then, for Miss Shirley's to answer the call with their spiked take on a summer classic: the Strawberry Margarita Spritzer•. You may be familiar with the non-alcoholic version; it's Shirley's most popular drink.

The big spring training story of the past few days comes not from the Orioles' winter home in Sarasota, Fla., but from down the road in Fort Myers, where news that the Boston Red Soxhave banned beer in the clubhouse seems to have everyone in a tizzy. Pundits are pontificating about it, new manager Bobby Valentine is explaining it and the Red Sox players have been asked about it endlessly. (A personal favorite quote from veteran slugger David Ortiz: "We're not here to drink.

WHEN SHE was in fourth grade the girl wrote, "What do you think it does to somebody to live with a lot of pressure?" Starting at age 8 she had been cashing the public assistance check each month, buying money orders, paying the bills and doing the grocery shopping. One little brother she walked to school; the other she dressed and fed before leaving him at home.Their mother drank."The pressure she was talking about wasn't even the pressure of running an entire household," said Virginia Connelly, who oversees substance abuse services in schools in New York City.

After reading all the coverage of George Huguely's murder trial, I feel compelled to write. All the focus on this horrible event has shown just how ignorant society is about alcoholism and its effects on the drinker and the family and friends who surround that person. Alcoholism is a disease. Expecting a parent or worse yet a group of 20-somethings to handle another person's alcoholism is like expecting them to provide a cure for a friend with cancer. It can't be done. Jean Marbella wrote on Sunday that "Huguely wasn't drinking in a celebratory fashion.

For some of us, the pain of the dual tragedies of Yeardley Love and George Huguely is intensified by the fact that both children are so familiar to us. Raise your hand if you have spent any part of your child's life caught in the lacrosse whirlwind that sweeps through Maryland each spring. And summer. And fall ball. And the winter indoor league. It is something that ordinary civilians might not comprehend (though ballet parents or horse show parents might sympathize). Lacrosse can be a toxic mix of parental ambition and peer pressure.