By Khalida Sarwari
The Cupertino City Council next month will consider an ordinance holding parents responsible for any underage drinking or marijuana smoking that goes on under their roof.
Proposed by the city’s teen commission, the social host ordinance is scheduled to go before the council on March 6. If approved, it will take effect in 30 days, said Daniel Mestizo, Cupertino’s recreation director.
“The teen commission is proposing a new measure that would penalize the hosts of events where underage drinking takes place,” Mestizo said. “Adults would be given a fine. Teens would be required to take classes or do community service.”
Cupertino’s proposed ordinance closely mirrors regulations already in place in nearby cities Monte Sereno, San Jose, Saratoga and Sunnyvale.
Saratoga’s ordinance was passed four years before the death of Audrie Pott, a 15-year-old Saratoga High School student who hanged herself inside her mother’s bathroom eight days after she was sexually assaulted in a home during an unsupervised Labor Day weekend party. It was revealed that the teenagers, including Pott, drank alcohol from the liquor cabinet at the home.
The Pott case came up in deliberations of Cupertino’s social host ordinance, Mestizo said.
“During the teen commission’s discussion with Santa Clara County’s Department of Public Health, there were many cases on underage and binge drinking that were reviewed, including Audrie Pott’s case, that provided the strong support for a social host ordinance,” he said.
A Cupertino public safety commission staff report acknowledges that “while not a big issue in Cupertino, (the teen commission) felt a social host policy would send a message to parents about their responsibility in preventing teen drinking and substance abuse.”
By holding parents responsible, the ordinance more than anything encourages them to supervise or stop illegal conduct at parties held on their property and compels them to talk to teens about alcohol and drug issues, Mestizo said.
“This ordinance is more of an encouragement from the parents to let their kid know they’d be in severe trouble if any shenanigans go on,” he said. “It is the goal that now parents are even more aware of what’s going on. It’s a deterrent for underage drinking and that’s where it came from eventually.”
Cupertino’s proposed ordinance calls for a first-offense fine of $500 for anyone who permits, allows or hosts a party knowing that underage drinking or marijuana consumption will take place. A second violation would draw a fine double that.
In addition, the ordinance would require teens 18 and younger to complete a Santa Clara County sheriff’s-approved alcohol and drug abuse prevention course for a first offense. A repeat violation would require teens to complete 25 hours of community service and a third one within a year would require them to do 40 hours. Sheriff’s deputies have the discretion to issue a warning instead of a citation for the first violation, Mestizo said.
Mestizo said the teen commission took up the cause about a year and a half ago after representatives from the county’s public health department notified it that Cupertino is one of few cities in the area without such an ordinance. All nine members of the commission unanimously support the ordinance, Mestizo said.
Link: https://www.mercurynews.com/?p=5072949&preview_id=5072949
