More underage students faking it
Since Picadilly Circus opened in 2003, General Manager James Webb has been collecting baskets full of fake IDs. Finding and fining underage drinkers is a nightly routine.
“At the beginning, it was pretty bad. It still is pretty bad,” says Webb, who trained his bouncers and bartenders to use lights to search for glare and lamination imperfections when carding.
“I don’t think the people that try to get in underage understand the consequences,” he says. “You don’t get a slap on the wrist. Places get shut down, stupid behaviour like that can take people out of employment — just because one kid wants to get in a year early.”
When the provincial government cut the OAC year from the high school curriculum in 2003, clubs and bars were suddenly faced with a lot more kids wanting to get in a year early. And owners are fearful of the consequences.
Companies that sell liquor to minors can have their licenses suspended and may be shut down if employees are not doing their due diligence to check ID.
Under the Liquor Licence Act, anyone convicted of supplying alcohol to a minor faces a fine of up to $200,000 and up to one year in jail. Incorporated licensed establishments can be fined a maximum of $500,000 for this offence. Anyone who holds parties for minors where alcohol is served may also be subject to criminal charges and civil liability.
Since 2003, it hasn’t been uncommon for first-year university and college students to be as young as 17 or 18. And although 18-year-olds are legally adults and can vote, they can’t drink — at least not in Ontario.
Webb isn’t the only one who’s noticed the spike in fake ID use since the new high school curriculum came into effect. Police across the province see it every day.
Finding a “kid too young to get sloshed — completely sloshed” is a daily occurence for Const. Paul Van Seters of the Toronto Police Service’s Community Response Unit..
Seters, who is responsible for patrolling the Entertainment District by bike from Thursday through Monday nights has been cracking down on underage drinkers for 20 years now.
But, he says, the last few years have been “particularly memorable busy nights.”
“There has definitely been more and more and more minors trying to drink,” says Seters, who finds at least a handful of underage drinkers attempting to enter a club with fake IDs each night he’s on patrol.
The Liquor License Act requires officers to fine anyone “pretending as evidence of age documentation not lawfully issued to (the) person,” according to Section 30, sub-section 12 of the act. The minimum fine in Ontario for underage drinking is $130 in a pub or club and $75 in residences.
An employee at a shop near Ryerson, which is notorious for fake ID sales and altering, says the number of “card-seeking customers” has “doubled, even tripled”
since the double cohort strolled onto campus.
“These students just find out from other students that this is the place to come, so we get a lot of customers,” he says. “But we’re not responsible for whether it works or not. We give them out, we can’t control what happens
after that.”
And most of the time, Toronto Police Spokesperson Const. Victor Kwong says, they get caught.
“We’re very diligent with verifying ages of people who look suspicious,” he says. “Cards are immediately confiscated and fines are charged.”
Although Maurice Simms, a corporate communications consultant for the Liquor Control Board of Ontario, is confident the liquor distributor has not seen an increase
in fake or altered IDs in the past four years “because of its strict carding program,” Sgt. Ken Jessop of the
Waterloo police doesn’t think it’s being strict enough.
“I’ve busted I don’t know how many underage drinkers in residences all over both of the university campuses since the double cohort,” says Jessop, who often takes reports of underage drinking and fraudulent ID cards from campus security officers at the University of Waterloo and Wilfrid Laurier University.
Police officers in Waterloo, a town renowned for its large number of university students, had already
laid 175 liquor-related charges against underage drinkers one month into the 2003-2004 school year.
At the Ram in the Rye, Ryerson’s campus pub, wristbanding policies and carding practices have become so strict that Student Campus Centre General Manager Rob Emerson believes they have decreased the number of underaged students trying to drink there.
“I’m not going to say it never happens, but we’ve got a pretty complex wrist-banding policy in place that shows we mean business,” he says. “We never looked at it as a four-year problem.
“After the double cohort came in, we just looked at it as a permanent change because it meant that a greater portion of first-years who were not allowed to drink wanted to drink.”
Underaged students caught trying anyway are directed to Student Services.
“Breaking a law like drinking underage on campus is definitely something we frown upon, and if you try it here, we ban you,” Emerson says. “And that’s unfortunate not only for them, but for their friends who are of age because since this is an all ages pub. We’re a common gathering place for kids that can and can’t drink. You can’t just go to (nearby) Mick E. Fynn’s because they won’t let you in.”
Mick E. Fynn’s staff agrees — it’s not easy for underaged patrons to get inside, they say.
“Our doorman are well-trained, they know how to tell a real from a fake,” says Darren Jones, a bartender at Mick E. Fynns. “The only ID we accept is a valid driver’s license, and if we don’t recognize it or trust it, then we just don’t take it.”
After 9 p.m., no one under 19 is allowed in the pub because alcohol serving is at its busiest.
The Madison (often called “The Maddy,”) a popular lounge-style pub in the University of Toronto area, also has a very strict carding policy.
“We ask for a lot of government-issued picture ID — driver’s license, passport, health card,” says General Manager Jim McCardle. “There are definitely a lot more underage kids entering university nowadays and we’re being tough on those aiming to break the law.”
Underage drinking is a serious problem, as proven by the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health’s 2005 Ontario Student Drug Use Survey. Of 7,700 Ontario students from grades 7-12 surveyed, 23 per cent reported becoming drunk at least once in the last month. Another 23 per cent said they binge-drink (consume five or more drinks at once).
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