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Teen Survives Overdose Of Alcohol [.40]
Star Tribune ^ | 01.21.06 | Myron P. Medcalf

Posted on 01/21/2006 9:41:57 AM PST by wallcrawlr

A 16-year-old girl who had been partying with two friends had a blood-alcohol level of .40 when she was found passed out on a garage floor in Lakeville. She recovered, leaving police and doctors astounded that she survived at all.

Someone with that much alcohol can stop breathing and die or suffer severe brain damage, said Stephen Smith, an emergency room doctor at Hennepin County Medical Center. He said she was lucky: "A single overdose like that can kill you if you stop breathing and don't get rescued."

A Burnsville man was charged Friday with buying vodka and rum for the three teens.

< snip >

The girl and two girlfriends, both 17, drank vodka at one of their homes the night of Jan. 13 while the mother was at work. When the mother got home at midnight and found her in the garage, the 16-year-old girl was unresponsive. After police arrived, she drifted in and out of consciousness and was taken to a Burnsville hospital, where she spent nearly two days recovering.

< snip >

Jessy Mullen, 26, was charged with three counts of furnishing alcohol to a minor and three counts of contributing to the delinquency of a child, all gross misdemeanors punishable by up to a year in jail or a $3,000 fine.

(Excerpt) Read more at startribune.com ...


TOPICS: Crime/Corruption; Culture/Society; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: alcohol; teens
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To: kjo
Sorry, you're wrong; kids and alcohol don't mix. I am a public high school teacher and have been to too many funerals.

What percentage of the kids who drink, die? .0000001%?

21 posted on 01/21/2006 10:09:43 AM PST by Mark was here (How can they be called "Homeless" if their home is a field?.)
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To: SamAdams76
he ironic thing is that if these girls were allowed to drink in the presence of their parents, this situation would never have been allowed to happen

Agreed. I grew up in a family where drinking was no big deal. I began drinking wine with formal dinners like Christmas when I was 11 or 12.

When I was 18 & 19 my parents let me have keg parties at home as long as no one left drunk. That's the way it should be.

22 posted on 01/21/2006 10:10:31 AM PST by ElkGroveDan (California bashers will be called out)
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To: Chi-townChief

I didn't think I could have flash backs from my drinking experiences but you succeeded in causing my head to spin just by being reminded of Boone's Farm....


23 posted on 01/21/2006 10:13:29 AM PST by GoforBroke
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To: kjo; SamAdams76

Sorry to jump in here, but alcohal abuse among HS'ers has been going on since the beginning of time. Raising the drinking age has made it the forbidden fruit and forced kids to hide their drinking.

I grew up in the 80's before and after the drinking age was raised - there were kids drinking and driving through out that time and I too went to several funerals.


24 posted on 01/21/2006 10:14:12 AM PST by Cathy
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To: Mark was here

Too many who mix drinking and driving. I don't know the exact number, it shouldn't be hard to find.


25 posted on 01/21/2006 10:16:52 AM PST by kjo
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To: kjo

It is called the survival of the fittest, aka Darwinian selection, and thus it is all for the better. Kids and alcohol DO mix, and have been mixing for as long as alcohol was around. It is a purely cultural phenomenon - there have been no serious problems with youth alcoholism in major wine producing cultures. In other hard drinking places children have been introduced to alcohol on average MUCH earlier than at 16, but were eased into it gradually. One needs to completely erase Prohibition mentality and all its vestiges.


26 posted on 01/21/2006 10:17:32 AM PST by GSlob
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To: kjo

Sorry, but YOU are wrong. I've been drinking since I was 14 and so was about 90% of my peers. Fortunately I had a parent who told me to go grab a beer if I wanted one and as a result, I learned to drink responsibly under ADULT supervision. I did not have to go out into the woods with a bunch of crazy kids like they do today.


27 posted on 01/21/2006 10:19:03 AM PST by SamAdams76 (Blizzard coming to Northeast U.S.)
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To: SamAdams76
Substitute "sex" or "use of drugs" in the place of your use of "drink" and you'll see how absurd your premise is.

The ironic thing is that if these girls were allowed to drink have sex in the presence of their parents

The ironic thing is that if these girls were allowed to drink use drugs in the presence of their parents

28 posted on 01/21/2006 10:24:17 AM PST by DJ MacWoW (If you think you know what's coming next....You don't know Jack.)
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To: Emmett McCarthy
A .40 BAC is certainly very high, but not unheard of. Early in my career I used to do criminal defense work, and I often represented people charged with DWI (DUI). Back then, the legal limit in Virginia was .10, but I recall two clients who had BACs of .43 and .45, both measured by blood test, not breath test which I consider less reliable. The .45, a record holder, was a slight, middle aged, woman who was not otherwise remarkable in any way: that is, she didn't appear to be an alcoholic, was reasonably well-groomed, and did not exhibit any obviously inappropriate responses or mannerisms. She was picked up while turning circles backward in a shopping center parking lot at 6 am in the morning. She had no memory of the being arrested, nor of any memory of the events of the preceding evening.

All this being the case, I had an intuition that her BAC was high, but I had no idea how high. Back in those days, the blood vials were kept in pigeon holes in the far end of the clerks office -- a place where no one could reach over the counter and grab them. When I asked the clerk to fetch the vials so that I could look at the readings, she lingers at the pigeon holes looking at the vials then started to laugh. Then she called all of the other clerks over to have a look, and they all stated laughing. That's when I knew it was really bad.

29 posted on 01/21/2006 10:24:18 AM PST by PUGACHEV
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To: SamAdams76

You're right. The forbidden is very attractive when you are young and foolish.


30 posted on 01/21/2006 10:24:25 AM PST by Melusine
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To: SamAdams76
They may have been "allowed" to drink in the presence of their parents, as many states have laws that specifically allow the consumption of alcohol by minors when under direct supervision of their parents. But in a case like this, there's no reason that the teens would have wanted to drink under supervision of their parents.

I was raised in a household where there was always wine on the table at dinner, and my attitudes towards alcohol are a lot better for it.
31 posted on 01/21/2006 10:28:14 AM PST by July 4th (A vacant lot cancelled out my vote for Bush.)
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To: MineralMan
Uffda. Didn't you used to live here?

Wifey's the native...I'm the woosy desert rat. Last time we were there (winter) our hosts had a hot tub in their 3 car garage, but no heater!

32 posted on 01/21/2006 10:33:17 AM PST by ErnBatavia (Meep Meep)
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To: HHKrepublican_2

Taking copious notes, HHK.


33 posted on 01/21/2006 10:43:21 AM PST by speedy
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To: Emmett McCarthy
I saw part of the History Channel show on brewing. Sam Adams has a beverage that's 25% naturally brewed alcohol.

I think the name is Utopian. Limited quanitites. Any way, they've managed to breed a strain of yeast that doesn't
die at around 12%.

12%? And people are whining (or should that be "wining"?) at 0.40%...

34 posted on 01/21/2006 10:43:48 AM PST by Calvin Locke
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To: kjo
Too many who mix drinking and driving.

The discussion here was about kids drinking, not drunk driving.

35 posted on 01/21/2006 10:48:06 AM PST by Mark was here (How can they be called "Homeless" if their home is a field?.)
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To: DJ MacWoW

Explore the phrase "Let's compare apples to oranges" and see how absurd YOUR premise is!


36 posted on 01/21/2006 10:50:55 AM PST by SamAdams76 (Blizzard coming to Northeast U.S.)
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To: SamAdams76

You're mistaken about the law. You can give alcohol to your own children in your own home. Now if you let them drink a fifth and they ended up at 0.40, you probably would be in for child endangerment, just like if you let your toddler eat ant poison. But simply giving them alcohol in reasonable quantities is OK.


37 posted on 01/21/2006 11:08:54 AM PST by Still Thinking (Disregard the law of unintended consequences at your own risk.)
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To: PUGACHEV
She was picked up while turning circles backward in a shopping center parking lot at 6 am in the morning. She had no memory of the being arrested, nor of any memory of the events of the preceding evening.

If she was on private property when they caught her, shouldn't they have charged her with public intoxication (if the provate property was not her own), rather than DWI?

38 posted on 01/21/2006 11:11:48 AM PST by Still Thinking (Disregard the law of unintended consequences at your own risk.)
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To: SamAdams76
The ironic thing is that if these girls were allowed to drink in the presence of their parents, this situation would never have been allowed to happen

Don't bet on that, although I don't necessarily disagree that drinking in the presence of parents should probably not be illegal although parents should be held responsible if they did allow this sort of thing to happen.

39 posted on 01/21/2006 11:52:44 AM PST by bkepley
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To: Brit_Guy

Interesting. When I was 16, my father told me that I he ever found out that I had used alcohol in any form, my drivers license would be immediately forfeited.

My dad always meant what he said. I did not have even a single beer until it was legal for me to do so, at age 21. Then, like most young guys, I drank too much a few times, figured out that hugging the toilet was not much fun, and moderated my drinking from then on.

I'm 60, now, and have a beer or a glass of wine from time to time.


40 posted on 01/21/2006 12:42:48 PM PST by MineralMan (godless atheist)
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