Underage Drinking

A liquor store on almost every corner; kids walk past it every day. Teens play basketball in a schoolyard; nearby, older men hang out, drinking and carousing. Kids frolic in a tot lot; broken liquor bottles litter the entrance. Advertisements for alcohol are everywhere. Not surprisingly, some neighborhood children start drinking in their early teens. Others feel the pressure and follow suit in a few years. And we blame the kids. This is the urban version I've seen in Baltimore of the alcohol environment that American kids grow up in. It might look a little different in the suburbs or rural areas, but the enticements, inducements and pressures are similar everywhere.

The owners of Iguana Cantina, a popular downtown Baltimore nightclub, told the city liquor board yesterday that they will stop hosting "college nights," alcohol-fueled events that are open to those 18 and older, because it became too difficult to police crowds for illegal alcohol consumption. The club's owners appeared before the board to respond to accusations that two underage patrons were served alcohol there. Despite the owners' promise to end college night "forever," the board fined them $1,000 for serving beer to a 20-year-old Westminster man in January.

Power Plant Live banned College Night three months ago, but two nearby bars are still promoting the drinking and dance parties, which continue to draw hundreds of young people to downtown Baltimore on Thursday nights. In mid-March, Power Plant Live officials dropped College Night after the city liquor board found credible evidence of underage drinking at two of the venue's bars. But the "18 to Party, 21 to Drink" festivities continue at two nearby clubs that are not part of Power Plant Live - Baja Beach Club, at 55 Market Place, and Iguana Cantina, at 124 Market Place.

Sneakers and jeans, vodka, electronics and models, beer, car and movie reviews, cognac, tobacco, rum, more models, more vodka ... cover article. This is the order of things in a number of popular magazines that carry the latest buzz-worthy items designed to appeal to young people. It should come as no surprise that alcohol is high on the list, as the combination of sound marketing research and seemingly innocuous advertising has maintained alcohol as a staple in our social diets. Underage drinking is not just a problem for young people, parents, law enforcement and proponents of sound public health practices.

Reacting to public pressure, Power Plant Live has ended College Night, a festival of drunken revelry that drew busloads of young people to a neon-lit courtyard in downtown Baltimore where they wandered from bar to bar guzzling cheap drink specials. Developer David S. Cordish controls Power Plant Live and an affiliate holds an arena license that that gives his tenants the right to sell alcohol. Yesterday, a Cordish official met with the Underage Drinking Coalition, a group of police and liquor board officials, and announced that College Night had been canceled.

Airport cabdriver dies in crash along Beltway A 43-year-old BWI airport taxi driver died early yesterday when his cab crashed into a tractor-trailer that was parked on the shoulder of Interstate 695, according to Maryland State Police. Yury Fleytman of Reisterstown was driving a 2000 Mercury Marquis on the inner loop of the Baltimore Beltway near Interstate 70 when the vehicle went onto the shoulder, according to police. State troopers arrived at the accident site shortly after midnight, and medical personnel pronounced the man dead at the scene, police said.

Carroll County Deputy State's Attorney David P. Daggett apparently means it when he says, "If we find out that somebody over the age of 18 is buying alcohol for somebody under 18, we charge them." The legal drinking age is 21. Still, about a dozen adults in the county were charged last year with purchasing alcohol for minors, Daggett said. Some of the adults were younger than 21 and used fake identification. The county's new Task Force on Underage Alcohol Abuse will address that issue and try to figure out ways to improve patrols during prom and graduation weekends.

School board amends dress code The Harford County Board of Education unanimously amended the county schools dress code Monday to enforce restrictions on loose-fitting clothing. The motion, offered by school board member Salina M. Williams and seconded by Patrick L. Hess and Thomas L. Fidler Jr., seeks to better define what constitutes "baggy pants," said spokesman Don Morrison. The dress code policy prohibits "baggy pants" but has been difficult to enforce without specific parameters.

This probably isn't the photo album the Maryland athletic department wants you to see, but let's crack it open anyway: There's an underage swimmer building a pyramid of empty beer cans. And an underage basketball player drinking from a shot glass. We have a picture of a football player holding a gun in one hand with another draped over his shoulder. There's a photo of an underage gymnast drinking from a Corona bottle. And there's another swimmer drinking from two beer cans at the same time.

The message was loud and clear to students leading up to Mount Hebron's "Beach Bash II" dance Feb. 17: Don't drink. But by the end of the night, five students had been kicked out of the dance for alcohol consumption, and police were saying that alcohol was suspected in a single-car crash that killed one student headed to the dance and sent two others to the hospital. The events in Ellicott City that night have focused renewed attention on underage drinking, a problem not limited to Mount Hebron or to Howard County which, like other suburban school systems, is fighting back.