Ohio bill would hold adults more accountable for underage drinking

The bill would change the word “knowingly” within the Ohio Revised Code to “recklessly.”

“(State law) states that parents cannot ‘knowingly’ provide alcohol to minors,” Bird states in written testimony. “We believe that this standard should be changed to ‘recklessly’. By changing this one word, these parents will no longer be able to stock a fridge full of alcohol for the party and then hide behind the plausible deniability of ‘not knowing’ the kids got into it. This will better allow prosecutors to go after parents who host these co-ed teenage drinking parties and then turn a blind eye to what goes on when they’ve left the room.”

Bird adds in his testimony that a resident from his district knows of nine girls in one school year who woke up from a drinking party with a boy on top of them.

“Co-ed teenage drinking parties have always been prevalent but recently they seem to be growing in number, intensity, and can often lead to sexual assault,” Bird said. ”Sexual assault in these circumstances occur because of the mixture of alcohol, genders, and lack of supervision by adults."

Underage drinking has been on the decline in Montgomery County for the past 10 years, according to Tristyn Ball, director of prevention and early intervention with Montgomery County Alcohol, Drug Addiction and Mental Health Services.

She and her team found that the underage use of vaping devices is much more prevalent than underage drinking at the moment.

This is complemented by a 2023 survey conducted by the ADAMHS Board that states 6% of 3,800 students in grades 7-12 drank one or more alcoholic beverages within the past 30 days.

“(That) doesn’t sound like a lot, but when you look at the 75,000 students that are in Montgomery County, that’s a little higher than I want to see,” Ball says. “When we look at young people’s perceived risk of drinking, we have almost a third of Montgomery County students that saw little to no risk drinking a couple times a week so that’s definitely a measure we want to focus on.”

In regards to H.B. 19, Ball sees no reason that the bill shouldn’t pass, but predicted possible pushback.

“I think this is definitely a step in the right direction of closing some of those loopholes,” Ball says. “I don’t foresee any reason that people in the behavioral health field wouldn’t support this. I think politically, I can see the public getting hung up on the terminology and the ambiguity of that. How do you quantify ‘recklessly’ versus ‘knowingly.’ Also, it’s an additional restriction, so I feel like there could be some pushback on that as well. Other than that, I don’t feel like this is an incredibly controversial bill that I see a lot of issues with.”

If the bill does does pass, Ball believes it will be crucial to educate the community on what’s changing and what that change means.