Chris Rickert: It’s not easy to rescue teens from themselves

I asked three UW-Madison educators who know a lot more about alcohol abuse and teenage behavior than I do what they thought of social host ordinances. In general, they were fans, although they were not able to point me to any research on their effect on teen drinking and its consequences. Social host ordinances are aimed at “adults who allow a very large group of underage people to consume alcohol typically with no supervision at all, just no questions asked,” said Nina Emerson, director of the Law School?s Resource Center on Impaired Driving. Brad Brown, a professor of educational psychology, thought it was “naive to believe that an adult can adequately monitor the behavior of any more than a small group of teens at an event where the teens are drinking.”