My colleague Ron Bailey notes that Virginia Commonwealth’s Attorney Jim Camblos lost his bid for reelection this week. Camblos prosecuted the couple who threw a supervised party for their son’s 16th birthday. While the couple did allow the kids to drink alcohol, they ensured that no one could leave the house. When police arrived, about half the kids had consumed no alcohol at all, and the other half where well below .08. Camblos tried to put the couple in prison for more than a decade. They ended up getting 8 years, later reduced to 27 months, which they’re now serving.

I don’t think the couple should have been let off. I don’t think you should be allowed to serve other peoples’ kids alcohol without their permission, even if I do think the drink ages is silly, and the zero tolerance method of enforcing it even sillier. But the couple should have been fined. Prison is absurd.

The Virginia case was one of the reason why I wrote a Washington Post op-ed on the topic back in 2005.

More prosecutors need to be tossed out of office for making bad decisions about what cases to pursue.

In a case that’s been winding it’s way through the courts for some time now, a federal judge has ruled that a Michigan law allowing police to force minors who weren’t driving an automobile to take an alcohol breath test violates the Fourth Amendment.

One of the plaintiffs in the case, Katie Platte, had attended a party for a friend who had just enlisted in the Marines and was headed to Iraq. Police broke up the party, and told attendants they’d go to jail if they refused to take a breath test.

Another plaintiff, Ashley Berden, inadvertently left her purse behind when leaving a post-prom party. A police unit called the “Party Patrol” later broke the party up, and forced attendees to take breath tests. Finding Berden’s purse, police then went to Berden’s parents’ home, woke her and her family at 4 am, and demanded she take a breath test–all without a warrant. She blew .00, then sued.

Declan rips into the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation, a parasitic anti-drug and alcohol group that gets huge grants from the federal government to turn around studies calling for more power for the federal government.

Declan was sparked by a story in Colorado in which PIRE “researchers,” local sheriff’s, and NHTSA employees were pulling over motorists and asking for “voluntarily” blood, saliva, and breath samples to test for alcohol and drugs.

Addiction expert and public health activist Stanton Peele argues against zero tolerance alcohol advocacy in the Wall Street Journal.

Several studies have shown that the younger kids are when they start to drink, the more likely they are to develop severe drinking problems. But the kind of drinking these studies mean–drinking in the woods to get bombed or at unattended homes–is particularly high risk.

Research published in the Journal of Adolescent Health in 2004 found that adolescents whose parents permitted them to attend unchaperoned parties where drinking occurred had twice the average binge-drinking rate. But the study also had another, more arresting conclusion: Children whose parents introduced drinking to the children at home were one-third as likely to binge.

And you could make a pretty good argument that drinking in the woods and getting bombed at unattended parties are the product of the minimum drinking age.

Of course, when the anti-alcohol activists cite the “earlier the age one starts drinking, the greater the chance of addiction” figure, they lump it all in together, which paints an incomplete picture, and makes for bad policy.

In fact, the American Medical Association has actually put out press releases lamenting the fact that most teens get their first sip of alcohol from their parents. I’d say that’s exactly who ought to be giving it to them.

In particular, the court found that the Alcoholic Beverage Control regulations prohibiting “lewd” behavior didn’t pass constitutional muster, because they’re unevenly enforced–in this case, they were being enforced on bars in Virginia Beach, but not on outdoor music venues that also serve alcohol.

This could be good news for David Ruttenberg in the Rack ‘n’ Roll case. A significant portion of the state’s case for revoking his liquor license was that he allowed lewd behavior to go on in his bar. But as Gret Letieq has pointed out, the violations cited in the complaint against Rack ‘n’ Roll were pretty tame (a couple of girls flashing their breasts during Mardi Gras), particularly when compared to what goes down (pardon the pun) in other bars in the area, including one just down the road.

If uneven enforcement is the problem, I think Virginia’s ABC has no choice but to toss out the violations related to lewd behavior in its complaint against Ruttenberg.

I know I’ve promised a bombshell in this case for months, now. It’s still coming. Just need to get everything checked out first.

Don Boudreaux has a very interesting column this week arguing that it wasn’t an interest in liberty or recognition of the Volstead Act’s corrupting influences or catastrophic failures that ended alcohol prohibition. It was the fact that the Depression dried up federal tax revenues, and the government needed the tax money it could generate from booze.

Intrepid journalist that I am, I ventured to Rustico for lunch today to give the "hopsicle" a try (it's a tough job…).

Sadly, they're no longer serving them. At least until the state alcohol control tyrants give them the okay. The bar tender told me the owner is trying to cook the beer and add a few ingredients before freezing—just enough to let the idea fit under the exemption the Alcohol Control Board grants for cooking with alcohol. I did try the St. Louis Framboise that inspired the idea, though, and it's quite good, though my inner frat guy won't quite let me call it a "beer." But I'd imagine it'd make a delicious frozen treat.

Rustico's battle with the ABC over the hopsicle idea apparently made CNN earlier today.

Also, try the soups.

Rustico is a fantastic little restaurant just a short distance from where I live. It's where I watch most the Colts games in the fall. It has a massive-but-thoughtful thoughtful beer menu, and really innovative, tasty lunch and dinner menus. Even the bar food is interesting (and delicious).

A few weeks ago, Rustico owner Greg Engert put a St. Louis Framboise in the freezer to chill and forgot all about it. A few hours later, he went back to retrieve the beer and noticed it had frozen solid. He chipped out a chunk, tasted it, and an idea was born: the hopsicle.  He quickly moved to put a variety of frozen beer treats on the menu.

Enter the Virginia Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control. We can't have people innovating, you know. And we certainly can have people making alcohol fun or interesting. As it turns out, beer must be sold in its original container, or poured immediately into a glass (though I'm not sure how this accounts for deserts or foods made with beer). So the state egency is sending an appropriately official sounding "special agent" to investigate.

Engert was on the Washington Post's local radio station yesterday, sounding appropriately deferential to his regulators, promising to work with them to make the idea legal. Though it's unfortunate he can't call them out for the petty tyrants they are, his sucking up is probably a wise move. Virginia's ABC is pretty notoriously authoritative. Would hate to see Rustico get the Rack 'n' Roll Pool Hall treatment.

A Virginia woman who bought beer and wine for her son's 16th birthday party is headed to prison for 27 months. I understand the need to charge her—she apparently lied to the parents of the kids her son invited. But it seems to me that a fine would have been perfectly appropriate, particularly considering that (a) none of the kids drank to the point of legal intoxication, and (b) she collected keys at the door, and no one left the party.

And 27 months is ridiculous. Thing is, it was almost much worse. The trial judge originally sentenced the woman to 8-10 years, a sentence supported by the local chapter of MADD.

Apparently, it would have been better if she'd turned a blind eye to her son and his friends' underage drinking, and allowed them celebrate in a motel room, a vacant parking lot, or a woods, as my high school friends did, and then drive home.

The article also includes some hysterical statements from the usual neoprohibitionist crowd. Like this one:

But Albemarle County Commonwealth's Attorney James L. Camblos III, who prosecuted the parents, said it was the worst case of underage drinking he has had to deal with in 15 years.

Really? A party where not a single person was drunk, and not a single person drove home after having a drink, is the "worst case" he's dealt with in 15 years? Really?

Or this one:

"In a lot of cases, the parents are the problem," said Diane Eckert, a prevention specialist in the Safe and Drug-Free Youth section of Fairfax County schools. "The majority of our youth say they obtain their alcohol in their parents' homes."

This is the same zero tolerance line of thinking adopted by groups like MADD and the American Medical Association, which a couple of years ago putting out a study lamenting that—horrors!—most underage drinkers get their first taste of alcohol from their parents. Of course, you could make a strong argument that parents are exactly who we want to give teens their first taste of alcohol.

This one's good, too:

Camblos, who has made curbing underage drinking part of this year's reelection campaign, denied any political motivation. "Politics had nothing to do with it. I've seen too many photographs of teenagers being killed in car wrecks because of drinking and driving."

This is just posturing. Elisa Kelly shouldln't have lied to the parents of her son's friends. But come on. She did more to keep drunk drivers off Virginia's roads that night than most parents. She likely made the roads safer that night. And she certainly did nothing to make them more dangerous.

I wrote about this case a couple of years ago in the Washington Post.

Amusing side note: My article so angered MADD and the AMA, the two groups' presidents called up a CNN producer and demanded the network do a story so they could ridicule me (one state senator in Maryland said I might as well be endorsing "shoplifting parties or rape parties").

The lede to the story was hilarious. It bemoaned how a "big think tank" (I worked for Cato at the time—which, by the way, has a budget a third the size of MADD's) had diverted precious MADD resources from their noble mission, because they now had to respond to this outrageous suggestion that parents who throw supervised parties for underage drinkers ought not be thrown in prison for ten years. The CNN reporter was also openly confrontational with me through the entire interview, and contiuned to lecture me even after the camera stopped rolling.

From the state that first brought you the idea of mandatory ignition interlock devices…

New Mexico is taking its fight against drunken driving to men’s restrooms around the state.

The state has ordered 500 talking urinal cakes that will deliver a recorded anti-DWI message to bar and restaurant patrons who make one last pit stop before getting behind the wheel.

“Hey there, big guy. Having a few drinks?” a female voice says a few seconds after an approaching male sets off a motion sensor in the device. “It’s time to call a cab or ask a sober friend for a ride home.”

Why not go all the way? Let’s have urinals that check for alcohol concentration, marijuana use, and venereal diseases, too!

Story here.

If, as I, you suspected that the whole “distributing alcohol without a license” bit was little more than an excuse for a bunch of cops to rough up some queers, it’s looking more and more like you were right:

The warrant for a July 1 raid at the men-only Pride Gym in Albuquerque, N.M., in which patrons claim they were bullied and terrorized by officers, shows that dislike for gay sexual activity may have been a motive behind the incident, local civil rights and LGBT leaders said.

Peter Simonson, executive director of the New Mexico ACLU, reviewed the arrest warrant issued for club manager Ron Cordova, who allegedly sold liquor to patrons of the gym without a license. Based on several statements in the warrant, the alleged alcohol violation may have been a pretext to target a club catering to gay men, Simonson said.

Before the July 1 action, the warrant states, Detective C. Snyder of the Albuquerque Police Department vice unit and agent C. P. Fisher of the New Mexico Department of Public Safety went undercover to investigate the “hot after hours” weekend gathering at the gym, as advertised in a local entertainment newspaper.

[...]

“What’s troubling is that the arrest warrant makes liberal reference to gay sexual activity going on after hours in the facility,” Simonson said. “And that activity, which is done by consenting adults in a private establishment, is not relevant to the alleged alcohol violation and is not illegal.”

The kicker is the undercover cops’ justification for conducting the raid with a SWAT team:

The warrant also states officers’ fears that “sending us into this place again puts us or any other undercover officer in danger of sexual assault and/or great bodily harm and/or injury.” The officers did not say that they were assaulted or even approached while undercover, however.

Ah, yes. Now I understand. You can see why the officers were worried. Honestly, if I have to read just one more account of a 70-year-old naked gay man jumping out of the showers to viciously attack a team of police officers with handfulls of taco?

Well goddammit, it’ll be one too many. Stop the madness.

I retract my criticism. SWAT team fully warranted.

Seriously.

In Albuqerque, New Mexico:

A weekend raid by law enforcement officers of the gay Pride Gym in Albuquerque, N.M., that left patrons “bullied, terrorized and humiliated” has prompted the ACLU and other groups to inquire into possible civil rights violations there.

[...]

“There were about 35 of us there, and most were older men, some in their 70s, eating tacos and chatting,” Ronald said. “Most of us were fully dressed, because it’s a legitimate gym with a sauna, but not a bathhouse.”

“Suddenly, a SWAT team carrying semi-automatic weapons, plastic shields and late gloves burst through the door and told us to get on the ground. They kept saying, ‘We’re not here for you,’ but still they handcuffed us and kept us on the ground until they could run background checks on all of us. This took about an hour.”

At least one elderly man suffered a panic attack and was taken away by paramedics, Ronald said. A few of the patrons were in the sauna when the raid occurred, and, when their towels fell, they were forced to lie on the floor naked, he said.

Ronald claimed that police officers led one man into a separate room and took pictures of him.

“The guy was wearing a leather harness and a jockstrap. A female officer with a digital camera took him into a room; we saw about 15 or 20 flashes coming from there and heard lots of laughter. They (the officers) were having a good old time. It was like the gay Abu Ghraib.”

A police spokesman said the SWAT raid was due to complaints that the club was dispensing alcohol without a license, and was part of the state’s anti-drunk driving campaign.

Jesus. Take your pick of outrages on this one.

Seattle and Tacoma look to ban booze.

But just the kind likely to be consumed by poor people.

It may well be drunk driving laws.

Jacob Sullum has the scoop on a troubling recent ruling from the Michigan Supreme Court, which let stand a DUI conviction of a motorist who had traces of marijuana in his system leftover from smoking the drug days earlier. He obviously wasn’t impaired — the substance still in his system wasn’t psychoactive. But Bush administration drug policy people would like to see the policy expanded across the country.

Interestingly enough, Michigan is one of just a handful of states in the country that doesn’t permit roadside sobriety checkpoints. The irony is, it was a Michigan case — 1990’s Michigan v. Sitz — that led the U.S. Supreme Court to determine (in an opinion written by Rehnquist) that though roadblocks are indeed a violation of the Fourth Amendment, they aren’t enough of a violation to offset the “25,000 deaths” caused each year by drunk drivers (love those activist conservative judges and their balancing tests!).

That 25,000 figure was of course the usual “alcohol-related” nonsense pushed by temperance types (the number of fatalities caused by actual drunk drivers is closer to 5,000).

But after that ruling, the case went back to the Michigan State Supreme Court, which then determined that roadblocks are still a violation of the state’s constitution. So the state that paved the way to those annoying checkpoints doesn’t actually allow them within its own borders.

So if the federal government gets its way, might we see the day when roadkblocks are used to test motorists for remnants of marijuana smoked days ago, as per the recent Michigan case? Should technology make such tests easily applicable, it’s certainly possible (onsite blood urine tests would probably present some logistical problems).

In the 2000 case Indianapolis v. Edmond, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that random roadblocks set up to search for illicit drugs were not constitutional. But the roadblocks in that case were set up to search for contraband, not to test drivers for drug-related impairment. I’d guess that if a state were to set up roadblocks to test motorists for drug-impaired driving, and if state officials argued that such measures were in the interest of public safety, the current Court has enough justices hostile to the Fourth Amendment to let it happen.

Even if Michigan’s position that traces of non-psychoactive compounds from marijuana found in the system days later are evidence of driving under the influence were rejected, a state could probably get away with arguing that while its roadblocks are intended to catch motorists currently impaired, motorists incidentally caught with traces marijuana in their systems from days or weeks prior are, naturally, still breaking the law, and so could legally be arrested and charged. Today, for example, roadblocks set up for the purpose of catching seatbelt or registration sticker violations wouldn’t be constitutional. But most roadblocks set up under the guise of catching drunk drivers have resulted in tickets for all sorts of unrelated minor infractions, with few if any actual drunk driving arrests. Courts don’t invalidate those tickets. So it’s difficult to see why they’d invalidate a conviction for marijuana found in a driver’s system days after ingestion, despite there being no scientific basis to argue impairment.

This Washington Post op-ed from career Nanny Statists Joe Califano and Louis Sullivan reads like your standard public health talking points: Unless adult-orietned products taste nasty, bitter, and disgusting, the companies who manufacture them will forever be accused of “marketing to children.”

Here’s my favorite part:

Buoyed by its success in pushing candy-flavored cigarettes, Reynolds has now introduced alcohol-flavored smokes. To make them appealing to our kids, Reynolds has marketed them with names based on gambling lingo as well: ScrewDriver Slots, BlackJack Gin, Snake Eyes Scotch and Back Alley Blend (a bourbon-flavored cigarette).

Color me befuddled. So R.J. Reynolds is guilty of preying on kids because it’s marketing cigarettes (which can only be purchased by people over 18) that taste like alcohol (which can only be purchased by people over 21) with gambling-themed names (only people over 18 (21, in some states) are permitted to gamble)?

Everything about those products is adult-oriented! Yet for Califano and Sullivan, this is evidence that R.J. Reynolds is targeting youngsters.

Lawmakers in Wisconsin now say the two are one and the same.

Careful. Loosening her inhibitions with a beer or two could now get you a sexual assault charge.

Via the excellent Spiked Online:

The campaigns to combat the effects of ‘passive smoking’ are widely credited for Europe’s growing number of smoking bans. Now alcohol is in the sights of the public health lobbyists, and they have invented the concept of ‘passive drinking’ as their killer argument.I have seen a leaked draft report for the European Commission, which is due to be published some time in June. It makes claims about the high environmental or social toll of alcohol, the ‘harm done by someone else’s drinking’. The report is likely to inform proposals for a European Union alcohol strategy later this year.

[...]

By October 2004, the theme was established in a Eurocare submission to the Commission. ‘Alcohol not only harms the user, but those surrounding the user, including the unborn child, children, family members, and the sufferers of crime, violence and drink-driving accidents: this can be termed environmental alcohol damage or “passive drinking”.’

This of course is a replica of the roadmap the prohbition movement used at the beginning of the last century, though Spiked author Bruno Waterfield does draw one distinction, invoking John Stuart Mill:

Once the temperance movement believed man could be saved. Today, it joins with the public health lobby to treat drinking as a form of social pathology rather than a question of moral redemption. Once, public health had the aim of protecting society against disease. Today, the ‘new public health movement’ seeks to protect society against people themselves.

Today’s public health outlook on drinking dovetails neatly with other powerful contemporary trends that emphasise human vulnerability or undermine trust between individuals. Linking drinking to free-floating risks, independent of the intentions of individuals, is a characteristic of today’s anti-humanist climate. But 200 years after his birth, we can take heart from the works and legacy of Mill. He stood against the tide in his day and won. We owe him a debt and we owe the future of freedom a duty to make our own stand against the new public health alliance of the twenty-first century.

I warned in a Cato paper a few years ago about the rise of the neoprohibition movement here in America.

Howard Kurtz writes on a bogus poll the American Medican Association conducted, and how the media lapped it up without a hint of skepticism:

Call it binge journalism, as out of control as a crazed keg party.

“Girls Behaving Badly,” said the Louisville Courier-Journal

“Girls Go Wild for Booze, Sex,” said the Boston Herald.

“Spring Break Can Be Hazardous to Your Health,” said the Philadelphia Inquirer.

“There may be some truth to the image of spring break as an orgy of wet T-shirt contests, booze parties and sex on the beach,” said USA Today.

“Stop the presses: Sex and intoxication among women more prevalent during spring break,” said MSNBC’s Tucker Carlson.

The breathless coverage was fueled by a survey of college women and graduates under 35, released in March by the American Medical Association. Some 74 percent said women use drinking as an excuse for outrageous behavior. Fifty-seven percent of women agreed that being promiscuous is a way to fit in, while 83 percent said they had friends who drank most nights while on spring break.

At the risk of spoiling the fun, it must be noted that this poll had zero scientific validity.

For starters, it was an Internet survey of women who volunteered to participate, not a poll relying on randomly selected respondents — even though the AMA mentioned a “margin of error” common to such polls.

Nonetheless, AMA President J. Edward Hill had warned in a statement that “spring break is broken. . . . These survey results are extremely disturbing because it brings up an entirely new set of issues including increased risk of sexually transmitted diseases, blackouts and violence.”

As first reported by the Mystery Pollster blog, which covers debates about the field, Cliff Zukin, president of the American Association for Public Opinion Research, has dismissed the survey as scientifically useless.

“I think it’s irresponsible to put that in the public domain,” says Zukin, a Rutgers University professor. “There is no scientific basis. I don’t trust those numbers. . . . It’s silly and it shouldn’t have seen the light of day.”

J. Edward Hill is the same guy who called CNN to complain after my op-ed in the Washington Post last year questioned the wisdom of arresting parents who throw controlled parties for high school kids, on the assumption that if teenagers are going to drink anyway, it’s best to keep them off the road. It’s also under Hill’s watch that the AMA released another silly poll showing that most minors get their first taste of alcohol from their parents. Hill was “alarmed” at this. Frankly, I’d say that parents are precisely the right people we want introducing their own kids to alcohol.

In any case, the point here is that the AMA has long ceased to be an advocate for doctors, and today is little more than a mouthpiece for the public health industry, similar to the way MADD is more concerned with neoprohbition than it is with highway safety. The AMA has been silent, for example, on the issue of the chill the DEA’s campaign against opiates has had on the treatment of pain. It’s been passive on the odious HIPAA regulations that can send a doctor to jail for honest errors in paperwork. And the organization has bought the government’s line on medicinal marijuana, despite the fact that the AMA had previously established a long and distinguished record of dissent on the issue, objecting to the idea that some drugs shouldn’t even be allowed for research into possible health benefits.

Instead, the AMA today spends a good deal of its time, resources, and clout telling you how to live your life, and telling parents how to raise their kids. That it would take the time to commission a poll to show that — gasp! — college students drink and have sex on spring break is rather telling. The organization seems particularly obsessed with alcohol, despite the fact that study after study after study has shown enormous health benefits associated with moderate alcohol consumption.

As Kurtz notes, what’s even worse is that the organization has stooped to using bogus science and fake polls to make its case.

Last Sunday, the Houston Chronicle ran a fluff piece on DEA administrator Karen Tandy. Among the lowlights:

“I have two teenaged daughters and I’m no different than any other parent - I worry about my kids. They are great kids, but peer pressure can be a big issue.”

Her use of maternal instinct may partly explain why during her 32 months as DEA chief, Tandy has been an unapologetic advocate for tough enforcement of laws against marijuana, a substance critics say is less destructive than heroin or cocaine.

“We have more teens in ( counseling ) for marijuana than for all other drugs combined, including alcohol,” she said recently in her office in the agency’s northern Virginia headquarters.

[...]

Regardless of the occasional critic’s shot, Tandy retains her passion for running the government’s largest anti-drug bureaucracy - the kind of job that can be stressful and emotionally exhausting.

“This job is a calling, not just for me but for all of the 11,000 people in this agency. I have the best job on Earth,” she said.

[...]

In the Justice Department, Tandy was a pioneer in the enforcement of asset forfeiture law - a government tactic used to deprive drug merchants of material gain by seizing planes, boats, ranches and more exotic possessions such as strip clubs and golf courses bought with drug cash.

By 1993, she was running the narcotics office at Justice, which put her on the path to being appointed by President Bush to head the DEA in 2003.

With her background in asset forfeiture, Tandy has focused on going after the money of drug pushers.

“When I came through the door, I made money the No. 1 priority,” she said.

Obviously, I have a rather different take on Tandy’s tenure (which started, incidentally, with her cowering and fleeing to avoid a Capitol Hill confrontation with Suzanne Pfeil, a wheelchair-bound medical marijuana and post-polio patient who woke up one morning to the barrel of an assault weapon toted by a DEA goon). My tangle with Tandy on the prescription painkiller issue here. Good primer on asset forfeiture here.

Hat tip.

Longtime readers know I’ve been warning for some time that we’ll soon see the day when every car in the country comes equipped with an ignition interlock device, requiring the owner to blow into a tube and pass an alcohol test before he can start the car. Estimates vary, but most I’ve read suggest the devices would add about $1,000 to $1,500 to the price of a car.

The idea found some fertile ground in New Mexico, where it passed the statehouse but not the senate, and it has been repeatedly introduced in New York by state Rep. Felix Ortiz, possibly the single biggest Nanny Statist in all of American government.

Until now, though, the idea hasn’t been taken seriously outside a core of hardcore neoprohibition types. Even MADD has in the past stopped well short of supporting mandatory installation on all cars, instead opting for the devices for repeat offenders.

No more. New MADD president (and public health revolving door veteran) Chuck Hurley now supports the idea. Not only that, but it has now entered the realm of “serious public discussion,” meriting a front page story in USA Today.

It’s not just that ideas as absurd as this one are slowly gaining acceptance, it’s that the lapse of time these Nanny State gimmicks must traverse to get from absurd to mainstream grows shorter by the day.