SamPratt.com

This week’s Hudson Common Council meeting on the recent underage drinking sting stirred up even more discussion of how and why this came about. Here are some further thoughts on the topic:

1. Unless you’re Tom Cruise in Minority Report, there’s a big difference between preventing crimes and creating them. Everyone wants crime prevented, and even deterred. But when unusual scenarios are created which induce crimes, people perceive it as a set-up. And to responsible bar owners and their patrons, that’s how the Catholic Charities “program” looked... The simple fact is that underage drinkers hardly ever set foot in most of these establishments—at least, unless they’re hired to do so with grant money. That’s why many viewed these operations as an unnecessary and punitive sting more than any urgent or effective deterrent to underrage drinking.


2. Arguments that the undercover youth involved “didn’t look 30” tend to ignore the facts (a) that the legal drinking age is 9 years lower than 30, and (b) that context and attitude greatly influence the perception of age. Put an undercover agent alongside older drinkers in a high-priced establishment, and that 19-year-old will indeed seem a lot more mature. The situation also gives the server much less reason to suspect the customer. One might argue that just gives all the more justification to card aggressively. But realistically, that’s not how the world works, and the question remains why crimes were instigated in locations where, by officials’ own admission, few if any have been occurring? Where there’s no smoke, there’s no need to pull the fire alarm.


3. The Hudson police chief (a likable and honorable guy) was correct that using fake I.D.s and getting older friends to buy for teenagers are the main ways youths get their hands on alcohol. But to my knowledge, neither method was addressed by this sting. From what’s been reported, it neither tested bartenders’ ability to recognize fake I.D.s. nor was designed to catch adults buying alcohol for minors. Rather, agents lured bartenders into making a transaction that otherwise would not occur over their counters. Problems with fake I.D. and adult surrogate buying would pertain far more in our area to convenience store beer purchases, not Hudson bar/restaurants.


4. Statistics also have been brought forth about the very real problem of teenaged “binge” drinking. But again, since the sting didn’t address that problem, this barely seems relevant to the issue at hand. The undercover agents weren’t ordering six shots of Jager at a clip, and the targeted establishments hardly cater to binge drinkers of any age. After all, what teenaged binge drinker would blow $100-plus dollars on high-priced mixed drinks in a quiet place full of adults, when one could much more easily score a twelve pack at Stewarts or X-Tra Mart for 12-13 bucks? (Moreover, in a tight-knit community like Hudson, someone usually will walk an adult friend home if they’re overdoing it, well before they reach binge levels, or else the bartender will cut them off.)

As such, it remains understandable that many businesspeople and residents got the impression that the Catholic Charities sting was more about the availability of funding to spread around, or even an animus (conscious or unconscious) to certain “types” of places, than about curbing any growing problem. In the context of other hostile City actions, such as punitive tax assessments, such conclusions are all the more likely, and should be anticipated. It would be nice to think there was no animus involved, but the suspicion remains widespread that Hudson officialdom has it in for “those people” they didn’t know in high school.

In the future, sticking to alcohol education and training—rather than instigating crimes which don’t normally occur—would help ensure that everyone can raise a toast together. It’s a lot better than smashing more bottles over each others’ heads, and the Council could avoid that by explicitly specifying the purposes of any future funding of this type.