PARTY'S OVER FOR U.S. TEENS TRYING TO DRINK IN TIJUANA

TIJUANA - American teenagers once loved this border city's neon-lit,
disco-infused nightclub strip - a lawless playground that served up
tequila shots and all-you-can-drink specials, no matter your age.

These days, the party's coming to a sobering end.

Public-health advocates, together with police on both sides of the
border, are celebrating the first anniversary of their crackdown on
border binge drinking, dubbed Operation Safe Crossing.

While many San Diego-area college students - most too young to drink
legally in California but old enough to get drunk in Mexico - still
proclaim the Avenida Revolucion strip an ideal party destination,
authorities are pleased with the progress they've made stopping
high-schoolers.

Because of ID checks at the U.S. border, fewer would-be partyers are
heading to Revolucion's 30-odd bars and discos, which translates into
fewer fights and fewer drunken drivers, officials say.

About 20 percent fewer Americans are going to Tijuana to drink this
year than last year, said James Baker, executive director of the San
Diego-based Institute for Health Advocacy, an organization studying
the problem.

San Diego and state police have worked harder to enforce the law
barring Americans under 18 from crossing the border without parental
permission.

On Friday night, the start of the Labor Day weekend, 99 minors were
detained for trying to cross the border, and letters were sent to
their parents. On Saturday night, 140 minors were denied entrance to
Mexico.

"When we went down a year-and-a-half ago, you could see 14- and
15-year-old American kids drinking," Baker said. "Now it's uncommon to
see that, and that thrills me."

More than 50 officers - federal, state and local police - kept drunk
Americans on their way home from fighting or getting into their parked
cars on the U.S. side of the border.

On the Mexican side, Operation Safe Crossing entails keeping Americans
under 18 - the legal drinking age in Mexico - out of bars by fining
owners who allow them inside and by sending city inspectors from club
to club for spot ID checks. That means some Americans end up showing
their IDs three times: at the border, at the bar door and again inside.

Authorities also persuaded bar owners to take down cheap-drink
promotion signs.

"Far fewer are going and far fewer are coming back intoxicated," San
Diego police Capt. Adolfo Gonzales said. "Within the last year, we've
seen fewer fights, fewer assaults, drastically fewer rapes."

Tijuana bar employees can now take a course on how to recognize a fake
American ID card. Over the summer, bartenders participated in
workshops teaching them to refuse service to drunk patrons.

"We have much more control now," said Arnulfo Palomera Hernandez, a
program inspector. "With respect to the past year, we have 60 to 70
percent fewer minors in the bars."

The new series of ID checks worked to stump three disappointed
17-year-old San Diego high-school girls on Friday night; while they
managed to cross the border using fake IDs, they couldn't get into any
of the discos. They still found a bar willing to serve them, however.

"The cops let us in but the clubs won't," one girl in a drunken stupor
complained. "The clubs are harder to get into than the border,"
another said, staggering.

Checked-by: Patrick Henry