Neo-Prohibitionists often get help from the authorities, who themselves are increasingly likely to be neo-prohibitionists. Because they’ve learned that one of the most effective ways to control others and further their agenda is to seek office in the various state alcohol control agencies. Despite taking an oath to serve the public good, they more often alter policy to do just the opposite. Witness Oregon’s “minor posting rules,” which led to seeing the following sight at this past weekend’s Oregon Brewers Festival (OBF).
That’s right, that’s not a joke, you’re seeing it correctly. It is not a trick or optical illusion. Here’s a close up of the sticker:
Parents also had to wear a similar sticker making a similar pledge to remove their minor child by 7:00 p.m. So what’s the reason for these draconian measures? According to Ken Palke, Media Relations Liaison for the Oregon Liquor Control Commission (OLCC), it has to do with Oregon’s minor posting rules, where “minors are not allowed into an environment where drinking is the predominant activity. The OLCC feels that after 7, the Portland event is geared much more toward drinking, without much eating.
Here’s the OLCC regulation stating the minor posting rule’s purpose:
845-006-0340 Minor Postings
(1) Purpose. The Commission is charged with regulating the sale of alcohol in a manner which protects the safety and welfare of the citizens, and ensures that alcohol is used legally. As a policy making body, the Commission has a responsibility to send a clear message to the community and its youth that drinking alcohol is an adult activity, and that drinking environments are for adults. At the same time, the Commission recognizes the need to maximize opportunities for minors to eat at licensed premises while minimizing their exposure to drinking environments.
According to the OLCC’s “licensing people, the OLCC did not require that stickers of any kind be put onto minors during the beer festival.” But as Art Larrance, Director of the OBF, points out, the OLCC tacitly approved it by signing off on the procedure the festival used in the voluminous application process the OBF is required to go through in order to put on the festival. “The OLCC did not want any minors at the festival,” Larrance told me, and the procedure we came up with was to placate their concerns and comply with the minor posting rules. They also suggested prohibiting minors ages 14-20 entirely and the arguments Larrance made fell on deaf ears. According to him, he tried to explain how such rules would split family participation and keep many people from being able to attend and the OLCC “just sat there and didn’t say anything.”
Such behavior, I think, is consistent with the intractable and inflexible position that the neo-prohibitionist movements have taken in their efforts to remove alcohol from society. The OLCC’s notion that “drinking alcohol is an adult activity” and the so-called clear message they’re sending is that children should not be present during adult activities. Taken to its extreme, or its logical conclusion depending on your point of view, this will ultimately split society into two: one society which is adults only and one which is kid-friendly with no adult activities whatsoever, lest our youth be corrupted. And there it is again, the ubiquitous “it’s for the children” argument that invariably is used by neo-prohibitionist groups to push their agenda.
If parents wish to bring their children with them to a beer festival, what business is that of the state? Restricting parental authority in this method sends not the message they intend, but that parents cannot be trusted with their own children’s welfare and upbringing. How dare the OLCC presume to tell anyone how to raise their children. That is not their responsibility as they claim, but is the duty and responsibility of each parent. All they’ve done is wrested control from parents and used it to further the goal of prohibition. They’ve certainly perverted the idea of protecting society from itself.
It seems quite obvious to me that if you want to raise children who will become responsible adults, capable of reasonably enjoying what the OLCC calls “adult activities,” they need to witness the example of their parents and other adults doing just that. Keeping minors from ever seeing adults drinking will only serve to make it more of a taboo — thus making abuse more attractive as prohibited activities are always more desirable — and give kids no lessons to learn on “how” drinking responsibly is accomplished. Underage drinking — and especially abuse — is, of course, much less common in nations where alcohol is seamlessly part of the society and in which children are included in all aspects of the adult world. England’s pub culture has, for example, created family gathering spots for entire neighborhoods without managing to corrupt its youth. In fact, almost everywhere alcohol is not restricted but embraced as a part of everyday life, society seems healthier as a result. The frat party alcohol abuses are peculiarly restricted to the U.S., where drinking is such a ridiculous taboo that kids who lack any positive examples of alcohol act irresponsibly in the vacuum of information created by neo-prohibitionist proselytizing.
Ironically, the OLCC’s director, Teresa L. Kaiser, resigned in May of this year after being arrested “on suspicion of driving under the influence and reckless driving.” Following a two-car crash on the west end of Portland’s Sellwood Bridge, “police said a breath test showed her blood-alcohol level was 0.16, twice the legal limit for adults.” She probably never attended a beer festival with her parents to learn how to enjoy alcohol responsibly. But at least she’s gotten that infant alcoholism epidemic under control.
This problem sadly is not, of course, unique to Oregon. Neo-prohibitionists in communites all across America are trying to remove alcohol from public events such as county fairs, outdoor concerts and festivals of all kinds. When such puritanical ideas — like Oregon’s keeping minors away from almost any event involving alcohol — work their way into our laws, it’s the very children such laws claim to protect along with society as a whole that are being harmed. And we should do everything in our power to oppose them. I, for one, will continue to take my kids, Porter and Alice, to as many beer festivals as possible.