CROSS-BORDER BOOZING

Bars Are Luring Out-Of-Province Teens, And Results Can Be Deadly

A steady stream of cars and trucks pulls into the gravel parking lot
outside the Rocket, a run-down night club that gets its name from the huge
rocket on the lawn.

Several young people spill out of a dusty, beat-up truck. A young man
sitting in the front seat downs a bottle of beer and then he and his
friends make their way to the bar, joking and hugging each other along the
way.

A dry-ice fog hangs above the dance floor as a tipsy young man sways to
pounding music. Upstairs, people gather at pool tables, drinking and
laughing.

It's a typical Quebec bar scene, except the parking lot outside is full of
vehicles with Vermont and New York license plates.

The Rocket is a small bar less than a kilometre from the Quebec-New York
border. American teens flock to it to do what they're not allowed to do at
home - drink at the age of 18, and sometimes younger.

But for those young people, and their counterparts from Ontario who come to
bars on Quebec's western border, the ride home sometimes isn't as much fun
as the partying.

Despite years of public-awareness campaigns about drinking and driving, and
penalties for impaired-driving offences on both sides of the border,
teenagers are still getting behind the steering wheel after they've had a
few drinks - sometimes with disastrous results.

Last month, four teens - Nicholas Gage, 17, Brooke Kipp, 17, Mark Richards,
18, and Robin Lafont, 19, all from near Newport, Vt. - were killed when the
car they were in flipped over on Interstate 91, a few kilometres south of
the Quebec border.

Two of their friends survived, including the driver, 19-year-old Gregory
Twofoot, who has been charged with impaired driving in connection with the
early-morning crash.

The group had been drinking in Sherbrooke that night.

``This is a rural area, and there aren't any clubs for the kids to go to
here, so they go to Quebec,'' said Lt. Peter Johnson of the Vermont State
Police in Newport, which investigated the accident.

``It's a regular thing that kids in this area do. The drinking age is 21
here, plus you have all those clubs up there.''

Spurred on by the accident, the Vermont state senate has unanimously
adopted a bill that would give federal customs officers in the state the
power to enforce state law, as police officers do. This would include the
power to detain suspected drunk drivers at the border until police arrive.

The state house of representatives must approve the bill for it to become law.

The accident that killed the Newport youths raised questions about the
border bars, whose main clientele is out-of-province teenagers.

``Some of them advertise that the drinking age is 18 and it's legal to go
up and drink there,'' said Vermont senator Vincent Illuzzi, who represents
an area near the Canadian border.

``I just think there's different attitudes about alcohol in the U.S. and
Canada, or at least Quebec. I think it's more accepted in Quebec.''

At the border crossing in Rock Island, on the Vermont-Quebec boundary, the
Canadian customs officer pointed out one of the bars up the hill that
Vermont teenagers frequent, and talked about what night and time they
usually show up.

The bars that out-of-province teens choose are utilitarian, and usually
charmless. Their appeal is their proximity to Ontario, Vermont and New York.

A favourite for eastern Ontario teens is Martin Village, a small bar on
Lake St. Francis near Riviere-Beaudette from which you can almost see the
border sign.

For years, high-school students have made the 20-minute drive from the
rural areas around Lancaster and Alexandria, Ont., to this bar and others
like it along the border. Many of their parents also participated in what
is commonly seen as a rite of passage into adulthood.

``About 85 per cent of our customers are from Ontario,'' bartender Bob
Humenick said, drying a glass with a dish towel.

``We get the kids on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights. They come here
because the drinking age is 19 on the other side of the border.''

The bars advertise in the weekly newspaper in Alexandria, offering $1 draft
beer, free pool and free jukeboxes.

Humenick said his customers are usually asked for identification, but ``not
every night, every person.''

``You get the regulars, so you don't ask them every time,'' he said. ``If
they look really young, then we ask them. If they don't have ID, they don't
get in.''

The Surete du Quebec checks ``once or twice a year'' to see if the bar is
serving under-age customers, he said.

But ``they usually show up on a weekday night when the kids don't come,''
Humenick added.

Teens interviewed for this article said they often get into the bars
without having to prove their age - or if they are asked, they have fake
IDs ready.

Once they're in, it's usually the beginning of an all-night drink fest.

``These kids don't go out and have a drink to socialize,'' said Sgt. Andy
Vanderwoude, who heads up the Ontario Provincial Police detachment in
Lancaster.

``They go out and drink to get drunk and pass out and brag about it the
next day. I never saw anything like it before I came here.''

At the end of the night, the kids pile into their cars and start driving
home, which is often as far as 50 or 60 kilometres away.

For four Alexandria teenagers, that was where the trouble started four
years ago. They were killed after a night drinking in a bar in Dorion, west
of Montreal. A 17-year-old boy who had been drinking at the same bar was
convicted of manslaughter after his car bumped the other boys' car, sending
it into the path of an oncoming tractor trailer near Alexandria.

Police forces just outside Quebec are well aware of the Friday- and
Saturday-night trips to the province, and do regular spot checks to try to
dissuade teenagers from driving when they've been drinking.

After a night of drinking beer, some teenagers are dangerous weapons,
Trooper Richard Garcia of the New York State Police said.

``We want to protect these young people from themselves,'' Garcia said.
``We try like the devil to.''

In New York, the drinking age is 21. Drivers under 21 who have any alcohol
in their bloodstream can have their driver's license automatically
suspended or taken away as part of a zero-tolerance policy on drunk
driving. Border-patrol, customs and immigration officers at the New York
border have the same power as police, and can arrest suspected impaired
drivers.

Garcia said he couldn't recall any recent serious accidents involving New
York teens returning from Quebec.

``This zero-tolerance thing has come through in the past three years, and
it has pretty much knocked the wind out of them,'' he said.

``They don't want to take a chance going over there.''

It's different in Vermont, where border-patrol officers don't yet have
police powers. Some do find ways to detain people they suspect of being
drunk, but they don't have the legal authority to do so.

In Ontario, people with a probationary driver's license can lose it if they
have any alcohol in their blood. Other drivers face license suspensions or
revocations, or jail time, depending on the amount of alcohol in their
system and the number of times it's happened.

As for the Surete du Quebec, the police force says the Ontarians and
Americans aren't causing any problems.

People who are 18 years old are allowed to drink in Quebec, regardless of
what the drinking age is in their home province or state.

``It's really our problem,'' said Illuzzi, the Vermont senator. Quebec
could help by raising the drinking age for American citizens to 21, he
said. But he admitted that this was unlikely, and that it would probably be
unenforceable.

Several young Americans interviewed at the Rocket said they know there are
risks to getting behind the wheel after having a few drinks. They said they
make sure they have a designated driver if they're heading to a bar. None
admitted to driving drunk.

``If you're smart, you have a designated driver,'' said an 18-year-old man
from Alburg, Vt. ``You can have a really hard time at the border.''

One of his friends said he'd been stopped at the New York border many
times, and once his car was searched.

An 18-year-old who drove 45 minutes from her rural Vermont home said she
was stopped at the border the night she was the designated driver for her
friends.

``They did the whole deal, making me touch my nose, walk in a line and do a
breathalyzer,'' she said. ``I wasn't drunk, because I hadn't been drinking
that night, but I was so nervous. They treated me as if I was drunk.''

Several police officers said more young people are traveling with
designated drivers these days.

``You're got to give them credit for that,'' said Constable Hugh
McClements, a Lancaster OPP officer who conducts anti-drinking and driving
programs in two local high schools.

``Some kids do take it seriously. But you've got to recognize the fact that
some of them think they'll never get caught.''

The police said they hope the awareness campaigns they do, and similar ones
conducted by groups like Mothers Against Drunk Driving and Students Against
Drunk Driving, will encourage more teenagers to choose a designated driver
if they're going to drink.