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BACKGROUND

However -- although I teach public health, and I'm a strong advocate of policy (e.g., curbs on advertising) to prevent for-profit purveyors of unhealthy substances from exerting undue influence on minors or anyone else -- it's been my experience that "dram shop" laws create more problems than they solve.

The main issue, from what I've seen, involves (as W.C. Fields put it) "the fatal glass of beer"). An individual might drink all night, walk freely (and apparently soberly) into a bar or a fraternity house, and consume one drink; then he or she might go out, get behind the wheel of a car, and kill someone.

That tavern or frat house would, under existing law as I understand it, probably bear legal responsibility. There's simply no way to prove which drink tipped the scale from enjoyment to drunkenness; nor is there, often, a way to prove where this drink was consumed.

-- David G. Whiteis, Indiana-Purdue University at Ft. Wayne (posted 11/2/98, posted 2:30 p.m., E.S.T.)

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