‘Zero Tolerance’ for Adults’ Hypocrisy

Teenagers have a valid point when they voice suspicions that today’s endless barrage of rules and laws designed to restrict adolescent rights tell us more about the lamentable attitudes of adults than about “protecting kids.”

The justifications for the eruption of policies to shackle teens, of which new legislation in Sacramento to drastically curtail teenage drivers is just the latest, follow a disturbing pattern. Adults first exempt our own behaviors from scrutiny, then proceed to condemn all adolescents en masse for the sins of a few of their number.

The deadly crash of a van-load of Newport Harbor High School students in May will be invoked to “prove” that all teens need more regulation. Still endlessly analyzed, featured, reanalyzed and re-featured as “The Accident” is the 1995 wreck in which a drunken Katella High School driver killed four classmates.

The logic of authorities quoted in the press seems to be that all 150,000 Orange County teens are to blame for these tragedies. A drunken teenager who causes a crash is depicted as typical of all teens. An adult who does the same thing is an unfortunate individual.

Perhaps absolutist “zero tolerance” standards applied to teenage behaviors do stem from a genuine concern about the dangers of alcohol and safety of youths. But if that is the case, it is curious that we shrug off adult behaviors that endanger young people even more.

Statistically, adults are as dangerous with alcohol as teenagers are. The recent National Household Survey on Drug Abuse’s most ominous revelation was not that one in 12 teens smokes marijuana, but that one in five adults in their 30s and 40s (the age group raising teens) are heavy, “binge” drinkers--a 25% increase in the last five years.

State Highway Patrol figures reflect these shocking realities. Of California’s 25,000 drivers in alcohol-related traffic crashes every year, causing 1,500 deaths and 40,000 injuries, 90% are over the age of 21. Only 4% of alcohol-related crashes involve high school (age 14-18) drivers.

California’s 40-year-old motorists cause twice as many drunken deaths and injuries as 17-year-olds do. The worst group for drunken carnage is not teens, but men, who cause five in every six booze-related wrecks.

Half the adult drivers in alcohol-related wrecks sport “legal” levels (under .08%) of booze in their bloodstreams.

Further, the same “zero tolerance” society that angrily punishes a youth for a sip of beer allows a grown man to drive legally after downing a six-pack or five shots of whiskey. Lenient American laws permit adults to drive while twice as drunk as those of other Western nations. Our kids and adults pay a high price.

For example: Around the same time as the Katella teen tragedy, three adult drunk drivers caused smashups that killed 18 people, including 10 children and teens. A 35-year-old driver killed a family of eight; a 53-year-old driver killed a family of six; a 56-year-old driver killed four.

Reaction to these disasters was entirely different from that applied to teens. There was no mass assignment of “collective guilt” to the entire adult age group.

There were no demands that lawmakers enforce a zero-tolerance standard on adult drinking and driving “to save lives.”

This convenient hypocrisy speaks volumes as to why Americans display the worst alcohol problems of any Western nation. German, Italian and Spanish teens drink much more freely than American teens. The French can buy alcohol at 14. According to American experts, adolescents given such free access to booze should be besotted killers. Yet European teens display far fewer drinking problems not only than American teens, but than American adults.

Europeans reject arbitrary age limits for alcohol use and instead enforce severe penalties for drunken misbehavior regardless of age. Recognizing that adults are models for teenagers, Europeans set tough rules for grown-ups.

Not here. School and other authorities gung-ho to impose “zero tolerance” standards on student drinking would never dream of proposing the same zero standards, even voluntarily, for school teachers, staff, parents or themselves. As the alcohol industry gleefully advertises, drinking is an adult right.

Thus America’s “double standard” sends a clear message to teens, one we’re lucky most of them are smart enough to reject: The more you drink, the more “adult” you are, and the more adult you are, the lower the standards of behavior expected.