Underage drinking has become an epidemic across the country. This behavior is more common in colleges. College students between the ages of 18 to 21 make up 57% of the 1400 deaths due to alcohol that occur in college students 18-24 (Hingson et al., 2002). Even though this problem seems to be serious among college students it doesn’t start here. According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, first use of alcohol typically begins around the age of 13.

The college campus is filled with many people of different ages and the majority of them are over twenty-one. The average age at California University is 26. Therefore, the few students that are under twen

Here at California University many of the parties located off this campus provide alcohol. There will be one person that will buy three kegs of beer and bring them to a house full of teenagers. Surely someone knows that everyone at these parties is not twenty-one. Half of all college students (50%) report drinking in the past month (TRU).

One solution that I feel will help solve this problem already exists but is hardly enforced, is the presence of cops at every bar. This program called Cops in Shops, was set up to discourage underage drinkers to obtain alcohol by using fake identification. In this program a cop is present at the liquor stores and/or bar. A lot of these cops are off duty volunteers that feel that underage drinking is a real problem. This will eliminate the problem of using false identification. Here in California, PA the cops sit in their cars near the bars to make sure no one breaking any laws. What could be done is to have these cops be apart of the Cops in Shops program. There aren’t that many bars here in California Pa. So there would not be that many cops needed. They could make their rounds so that there is still a cop in the car looking around town. The cops could set up round that would be three hours at a time. These cops could be off duty volunteers or on duty cops.

The law today states that if someone over twenty one was caught buying alcohol for a minor or letting a minor consume alcohol they will get a $500 fine the first time and a $1000 fine they second time. I feel that the law could be changed to not allow that person to buy alcohol for 90 day along with the fine. This might discourage them to do this again because they are getting their privileges taken away from them. Another alterative is to m

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