DURHAM, N.H. – The alcohol that got Julia Zukerman into trouble with the law wasn’t in her hand or in the front seat of her car. In fact, she wasn’t drinking or driving – just walking – when a police officer told her to “blow a kiss in my face” and smelled her breath for booze.
“I thought I was fine, because I didn’t have anything on me,” said Zukerman, 19, waiting for her case to be called one recent morning in the courthouse of this college town. “Apparently not.”
The alcohol they were interested in was already inside her body.
That’s the way the law works now in New Hampshire, where minors can be arrested for what is colloquially called “internal possession” of alcohol, to the point of being intoxicated. In a break with legal tradition, an underage person with drinks in his or her system often faces the same charge as one with a drink in hand.
In the old days, police say, teenagers would drop their drinks and run when officers arrived. That would leave police with few of the particulars – who drank what, and when – necessary to build a legal case.
Then, in 2002, the state legislature expanded the statute to apply to those “intoxicated by consumption of an alcoholic beverage.” The offense is on the same level as a traffic violation, but carries a $300 fine and the possible loss of a driver’s license.
Under the new law, police didn’t have to establish when and how a minor had become intoxicated. They needed only to determine that the minor was intoxicated, with the alcohol inside them.
“It’s just like looking for someone who’s a drunk driver,” said Sgt. Kevin Kincaid of the Manchester police. The clues might be a stumbling walk, glassy eyes, an odor of alcohol or a blood alcohol concentration of .02, police say.
So far, such laws remain relatively uncommon.
But that’s starting to change: In Virginia, a 2003 bill allowed minors to be prosecuted for showing “physical indicia of consumption of alcohol,” whether or not a container of booze is present. Alcohol laws with similar intent have been enacted in Vermont, Arizona, Utah and Missouri.
In New Hampshire, if a new bill passes, police would no longer have to determine whether a young person has drunk enough to be intoxicated – any alcohol consumption would be enough for a charge.
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