{"id":2883,"date":"2013-10-16T08:45:53","date_gmt":"2013-10-16T14:45:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/alcoholmonitoring.com\/blog\/?p=2883"},"modified":"2021-08-26T12:03:33","modified_gmt":"2021-08-26T18:03:33","slug":"ma-high-school-sets-drunk-driving-message-back-30-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scramsystems.com\/blog\/2013\/10\/ma-high-school-sets-drunk-driving-message-back-30-years\/","title":{"rendered":"MA High School Sets Drunk Driving Message Back 30&#160;Years"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>If you aren\u2019t outraged now, you may be by the end of this&#160;post.<\/p>\n<p>In early October, Massachusetts high school honor student Erin Cox received a message from a friend who had been drinking, asking for a ride home from a party. <a href=\"http:\/\/bostonherald.com\/news_opinion\/columnists\/margery_eagan\/2013\/10\/eagan_school_slaps_teen_for_doing_the_right_thing\">According to the <i>Boston Herald<\/i><\/a>,&nbsp;Cox arrived to pick up her friend just as law enforcement showed up to arrest students for underage&#160;drinking.<\/p>\n<p>Cox didn\u2019t attend the party and hadn\u2019t taken a sip of alcohol. She\u2019d just gotten off of work at the Andover Inn and had met some friends at a yogurt shop when she received the message asking for a ride. Police cleared her in writing during her court appearance last Friday. But her school prohibits students from attending parties where there is alcohol, and it punished the student athlete in what most are calling a blind application of a \u201czero tolerance\u201d policy. Cox was stripped of her title as captain of the volleyball team and suspended from five&#160;games.<\/p>\n<p>North Andover High School just handed every teen a ready-made excuse NOT to do the right thing in order to avoid getting into trouble. The school could have used the incident&nbsp;to drive more awareness of the risks of underage drinking and to emphasize the&#160;<b><i>lifetime<\/i><\/b> importance of a safe ride home. Instead, district officials seem to have set drunk-driving messaging back by&#160;decades.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.scramsystems.com\/blog\/2013\/06\/amnesty-for-minors-in-possession-good-idea-or-get-out-of-jail-free-card\/#.Ul3B6qPn-po\">In June we reported on an Arizona case<\/a>,&nbsp;where some college students, afraid of getting in trouble as Minors in Possession, left an unconscious friend at a local ER with a note to alert staff that he had been drinking heavily and needed help. He had a 0.47 BAC. Cases like this have prompted a dozen states to pass \u201cAlcohol Amnesty\u201d laws that establish limited immunity from prosecution for minors who seek medical&#160;help.<\/p>\n<p>So do underage designated drivers fall through the&#160;cracks?<\/p>\n<p>It would seem laws are moving light years ahead of schools, an irony to be sure. So what about underage designated drivers? And what of the prevalence of these&nbsp;Zero Tolerance policies? Do these extend to having dinner with your parents in a business with a bar? Thanksgiving with the neighbors who serve wine? Christmas at Aunt&#160;Martha\u2019s?<\/p>\n<p>The district is standing firmly behind its policy. According to attorney Geoffrey Bok, who represented the school in court on&nbsp;Friday, they \u201chad little choice\u201d once police became&#160;involved.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.madd.org\">Mothers Against Drunk Driving<\/a> and other organizations who advocate against underage drinking have yet to respond to the topic, but the story has gone viral, including a change.org petition supporting&#160;Cox.<\/p>\n<p>I, for one, am grateful Cox took at least one drunk driver off the street that&#160;night.<\/p>\n<!-- Shortcode [san-joaquin-case-study] does not exist -->\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If you aren\u2019t outraged now, you may be by the end of this&#160;post. In early October, Massachusetts high school honor student Erin Cox received a message from a friend who had been drinking, asking for a ride home from a party. According to the Boston Herald,&nbsp;Cox arrived to pick up her friend just as law [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,11,15],"tags":[205,237,275,296,368,526,737],"class_list":["post-2883","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-drunk-driving","category-legislation","category-underage-drinking-2","tag-designated-drivers","tag-drunk-driving-2","tag-erin-cox","tag-feature","tag-impaired-driving","tag-north-andover-high-school","tag-underage-drinking"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v25.7 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>MA High School Sets Drunk Driving Message Back 30 Years | Sobering Up<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Massachusetts high school honor student Erin Cox received a message from a friend who had been drinking, asking for a ride home from a party.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.scramsystems.com\/blog\/2013\/10\/ma-high-school-sets-drunk-driving-message-back-30-years\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"MA High School Sets Drunk Driving Message Back 30 Years | Sobering Up\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Massachusetts high school honor student Erin Cox received a message from a friend who had been drinking, asking for a ride home from a party.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.scramsystems.com\/blog\/2013\/10\/ma-high-school-sets-drunk-driving-message-back-30-years\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Sobering Up\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/SCRAMx\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2013-10-16T14:45:53+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2021-08-26T18:03:33+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.scramsystems.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/teens-drinking-beer.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1000\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"667\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Sobering Up Administrator\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@scramsystems\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@scramsystems\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Sobering Up Administrator\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"2 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.scramsystems.com\/blog\/2013\/10\/ma-high-school-sets-drunk-driving-message-back-30-years\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.scramsystems.com\/blog\/2013\/10\/ma-high-school-sets-drunk-driving-message-back-30-years\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Sobering Up Administrator\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.scramsystems.com\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/d81eb856e7b30e26591614b66cb58512\"},\"headline\":\"MA High School Sets Drunk Driving Message Back 30&#160;Years\",\"datePublished\":\"2013-10-16T14:45:53+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2021-08-26T18:03:33+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.scramsystems.com\/blog\/2013\/10\/ma-high-school-sets-drunk-driving-message-back-30-years\/\"},\"wordCount\":469,\"commentCount\":7,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.scramsystems.com\/blog\/#organization\"},\"keywords\":[\"designated drivers\",\"drunk driving\",\"Erin Cox\",\"feature\",\"impaired driving\",\"North Andover High School\",\"underage drinking\"],\"articleSection\":[\"Drunk &amp; 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