But, Dio, you’re missing the very important point that not all parties are “keggers” up front. You keep talking about making it illegal for minors going to keggers. Well, sure, no problem, that’s a no-brainer. It should be illegal for minors to go to keggers.
But you’re overlooking the fact that many teen parties start out as simple “parties”, and the next thing you know, there’s underage drinking going on. And it’s simply not fair for the cops to haul in all the kids who were originally invited to a plain vanilla “party” at which alcohol suddenly appeared.
Yup, sure is. I’d be furious if one of my kids was at a party where the cops hauled in everybody just because a few people were drinking. I’d be furious at the law, and the cops, not the kid. Because as anybody who has ever been a normal teenager knows, it usually just ain’t in a kid to blow the whistle, or even to call Mom and say, “Hey, can you come get me?” No way. Social death. So Kiddo just sits there watching everybody else get tanked, or stoned. Passive.
Now, I would hope that my kids at least would have the gumption to say, “Hey, I’m outta here”, and go find a phone and call home and say, “Come get me”. But if they didn’t, I’d understand perfectly. And I wouldn’t hold it against them. They’re kids, for heaven’s sake. You can’t expect adult thought processing and an awareness of potential consequences from kids.
The Better Half once happened to be driving past the place where he’d dropped off our 14-year-old daughter at a party about an hour previously, and half the kids were standing around outside, smoking (our kid was not one of them, however). So he went inside, established that there were no longer any adults in the house, as there had been when he’d dropped her off, and he hauled her butt out of there, end of story. Now, that time, no, she didn’t say, “Oh my goodness, there is illegal activity going on here!” and phone home, and leave. And I wasn’t surprised. To make a BFD out of the fact that a lot of her 14-year-old peers were smoking would have cost her the tiny bit of social cachet she had, and having her dad appear like the demon king out of a trapdoor and drag her home didn’t help. But at least she wasn’t the whistleblower, she could tell 'em with perfect truth, “He just happened to be driving past after putting gas in the car and he saw y’all smoking on the porch.”