A few days ago, USA Today ran a story about fast food restaurants serving alcoholic beverages. I think it’s a really bad idea and was disappointed to read that some of my favorite chains — Burger King, Sonic, and Pizza Hut — are already doing so in Florida.
Fast food is fast — eat and run or grab and go. Add alcohol to the mix and you’ve got accidents waiting to happen. Of even more concern is that so many children are taken to fast food places. Whatever happened to the idea that alcohol was not to be sold or served in the presence of minors?
This was running through my mind today when I heard about three children who were mistakenly given strawberry margaritas at a Chili’s restaurant in Longmont, Colo. The kids were ages 8, 6, and 19 months. Fortunately, the kids are okay, but I couldn’t help thinking this was not an isolated incident. Hadn’t this happened before?
Sure enough, the story closed with a list of three other such incidents in 2011:
- In April, a Chicago-area mother said her 4-year-old was served an alcoholic mudslide instead of a milkshake.
- Also in April, a Detroit-area 15-month-old was mistakenly served apple juice with alcohol in a sippy cup.
- At the end of March, an Olive Garden in Lakeland, Fla., served sangria to a 2-year-old instead of orange juice.
I can’t help but think that more alcohol in fast food restaurants is going to result in more mistakes like these. Kids and alcohol don’t and shouldn’t be mixed.
I think you’re right, but I know that preemptively punishing responsible parents by arbitrarily prohibiting their harmless behavior doesn’t work. We should have learned our lesson with prohibition, but the raging War On Drugs having created the world’s largest prison population of victimless criminals is evidence that we just simply cannot learn.
Who would have thought we might learn something from Portugal?
So you think not serving alcohol at fast food restaurants is “punishing responsible parents”?
Hmmmm, there is some redeeming logic in the actions of two of the three restaurants. Least ways, my human thinks so. He’s very familiar with all three cities. The one that mystifies him is the action in Lakeland. That’s a reasonably decent place to live. The restaurants maybe have been doing the two young ones a favor in Chicago and Detroit.
Sandy
http://www.sandysays1.wordpress.com
Sandy! Great to see you again. Tell your human I’m going to look up the details of those other incidents and add the links to my post.
So you think not serving alcohol at fast food restaurants is “punishing responsible parents”?
Perhaps not you or me, but arbitrarily prohibiting it to those who would appreciate being able to consume it legally and responsibly is no different than any other form of preemptive punishment. To me, it’s no less illogical than the attempt to prevent criminals from owning guns by prohibiting their ownership to law abiding citizens. Because they are (generally) prohibited; Drugs, prostitution and gambling are all readily available but controlled by the criminal element in society instead of by organized community based rules. I admit… I can’t understand it.
Just because alcohol is legal doesn’t mean we have to make it available everywhere to every adult. Keeping it out of places frequented by children is neither arbitrary prohibition nor preemptive punishment; it’s a responsible society trying to be responsible.