<p>Your friend who is having the New Year's Eve party is taking a great risk if any of the kids are underage or if there are illegal substances at the party. It has become increasingly difficult to have a party for highschool and college aged kids because of their noncompliance regarding alcohol and drugs. It is bad enough when you make a conscious effort to bar those items and keep them kids corralled in your home, but if you are taking a "see no evil" approach, there is a significant risk involved. There is a high likelihood that someone will abuse alcohol and/or drugs, and if that person does leave the premises and has a problem, the adult of that house/party can be held liable. If a someone complains of anything, and the police come by and any sign of underage drinking or the whiff of any drugs will be considered a crime. I have seen well meaning parents get slammed when either of those scenarios have occurred.</p>
<p>After hosting a few events after which I found some drugs, and alcohol signs, I have reduced the size of any gatherings for my teens and college kids. They just cannot be trusted, and the liability is too great. I am stumped as to how to patrol the party without becoming the Gestapo. I know of a number of other parents who have taken this risk and feel comfortable doing so, but what happens is that there is drugs and alcohol at those gatherings, and they just have to hope that it is kept discrete and that no one causes any problems. Usually they do not, but the risk is there even with good kids. </p>
<p>I have no answers as to what colleges can do, since I don't even see how parents can control this scene if there are a large number of kids at certain ages on the premises. Punitive measures seem to just result in more kids getting into trouble and getting kicked out. The problem is just so wide spread that it is hard to get any grasp on it. Essentially, the more and larger gatherings of college aged kids you have, the more substance abuse you have at the event. That is why sports and frats in a school incur more abuses. They have the crowds at their events and parties. In a city, the events tend to be more dispersed, but I doubt the number of drinking episodes is less. I know that at schools like BU and NYU, there is plenty of drinking and drugs, but much of it occurs in many locations in Boston and NY which dilutes the impact. When you get a school in an outlying location, there are limited venues, and that is where the abuse/partying is occurring.
The advantage of centralizing the problem is that you can at least contain it. It is frightening to me to even think about drunk college students stumbling around a major city, and too many of them do meet there demise that way whereas there is a safety element when the partying is done on campus without cars and when the people involved all tend to be insiders. </p>
<p>It is a problem and a dilemma for parents. What is preferable--a private home or (campus party) where you know there will be drugs/alcohol, or some outside venue where the consequences are less predictable? If you have a kid who does not drink, the peer pressure of those private events makes it highly likely for the kid to get involved. So hard to say no, when it is freely flowing and being offered by all you know, and it is an integral part of the party. A small group at a public place, if they did not bring their stash, and had no intent of drinking/using drugs, is less likely to suddenly decide to imbibe. But should they do so, they are in hostile territory if things do get out of hand. </p>
<p>I don't doubt the 1400 number for alcohol RELATED deaths. Just mentally tallying up the deaths around here that I saw reported in the papers would make it plausible. But most of the cases are traffic type incidents with drinking involved. The safety component of college events is that there is less driving involved a those things. Kids stumble their way on foot back to their beds for the most part. THe thing that scares me is that a number of those kids who are hospitalized these have taken enough alcohol to be gravely ill and some have even died. Not in the thousands as far as death goes, but each year some college kid dies of alcohol poisoning, often on that trek back home. As I said earlier, I never heard of such a thing when I was in college,and now it has become a common story. Kids are increasing their consumption to the point where the amount consumed is becoming an issue, not just the behaviour from impairment from the drugs. Those I know from my day, passed out in their rooms, not on campus or at the event, and I don't know anyone hospitalized, and at a small school like mine, I would have heard. Now in hospitals around college towns, it is a regular rounding up of those kids so severely impaired that they need medical attention. I'm not so sure about Mini's city vs isolated campus theory, because I know that the paddy wagons are full in college campus hot spots such as Oakland in Pittsburgh where one of my kids attended, and those kids loaded in there are those drinking or abusing drugs to a point that they have attracted police attention. And Pittsburgh is not a major city so the cluster points can be easily identified where the students hang around and get soused.</p>