Ban on drinking games misses the cup

Cancel any plans for spring break in Surf City this year, the fun is all dried up.

Rita Yeung | Daily Trojan

The Huntington Beach City Council voted last week to ban all drinking games from new businesses and from those renewing their entertainment licenses in an effort to improve the city’s “party town” image.

Yes, that means no more beer pong.

The ban started as a voluntary request last fall from Police Chief Kenneth Small, asking bars and other existing businesses to ban the games or risk losing their entertainment permits.

It has now become a citywide rule that is in the “best interest of the community,” according to police Capt. Chuck Thomas, who also says that beer pong encourages “excessive drinking.”

The main issue for Huntington Beach officials is not the drinking games, it’s the excessive drunkenness of some of the bar-goers.

“We had patrons that go to the bar at 2 a.m. spill back out onto the streets and into residential neighborhoods … going to the bathroom right in front of other people’s lawns,” said Councilman Don Hansen.

Sadly, these patrons aren’t your average freshman binge drinker. This ban is for businesses where the majority of people are well above the legal drinking age. According to U. S. law, citizens are officially deemed “responsible” enough to drink at the age of 21. If people are behaving irresponsibly, officials need to punish the real crimes, rather than placing such strict rules on 21-year-old adults at establishments built for the purpose of consuming alcohol.

At what point is this government intervention taking it a little bit too far? No current laws establish that the way one consumes alcohol can be controlled, until now. Several laws do exist, however, that address one’s behavior in public. Maybe it’s time for the Huntington Beach police to buckle down on public intoxication and drunk driving. And they should examine current laws that prohibit public urination.

If the real problem is unruly drunks at 2 a.m., why blame it on a friendly game of beer pong?

Beer pong’s popularity has skyrocketed in recent years, with the current World Series of Beer Pong drawing over 800 participants from all over the United States and Canada to play for a $50,000 prize in Las Vegas. On many campuses, including USC, beer pong and other games like flip cup are staples at any party.

Though the rules vary, in most beer pong games the table consists of six to 10 cups partially filled with beer on each end. So for both sides, an average of four to six beers are used per game. This means the average single player consumes two beers, though it is usually even less because the game is played in couples.

One beer? Huntington Beach officials think eliminating one beer from a player’s night will solve all of their binge drinking problems?

Huntington Beach has been plagued with excessive drinking for years, as a result of the young, hip beach town culture and the renovated Downtown area that enables the partying. In 2009, 34 percent of total arrests were for driving under the influence, and community residents consistently complain about late-night incidents caused by the rowdy crowds. No one can blame them for wanting to change this image, but the issue is whether it can be done more efficiently.

Regardless of if bar-goers can play their favorite game, they will still consume alcohol, either in different forms at the same bar or in a drinking game at home.

With this ban being enacted on a citywide level, it could easily be adopted by other cities and, even more likely, universities. So what would this mean for USC?

A ban on these games around campus, however, might even prove to have more disastrous results. On The Row, a game of beer pong is the alternative for many people to taking shots of hard liquor, a much more dangerous practice.

If the problem truly is the unruly behavior of bar patrons, this regulation seems misguided. We can only hope that officials take a closer look at the cause of unruly behavior and binge drinking before enacting laws that play too much of a parental role and potentially put a damper on our Thursday nights.

Melissa Zonne is a junior majoring in public relations.