Boston Criminal Defense Blog

As a parent, you know that underage drinking happens. Movies about high school and college tend to glamorize it. However, does it happen as much as these fictionalized accounts imply? To understand it, here are three facts you need to know:

• In every state in the country, the legal drinking age is 21 years old. No one can legally buy or consume alcohol under that age.
• Even so, 11 percent of the alcohol that people drink in the United States gets consumed by people who are from 12 to 20 years old. That figure shows that simply making something illegal does not put an end to it.
• About 90 percent of the drinks consumed by people in that 12-to-20 age bracket are consumed as part of America's binge drinking culture. This is when people drink excessively and with the goal of getting intoxicated. In short, most teens are drinking heavily when they drink illegally, rather than sticking to the recommended one or two drinks a day.

Underage drinking is definitely a problem in the United States, and many parents are unaware that their children are involved in it. Teens work very hard to hide this from their parents. While the movies may exaggerate the drinking culture and turn it into something it is not, the reality is not always as drastically different as you may hope. If your teen is drinking at all, odds are that he or she is binge drinking.

Pain may let you know that you are alive, but in many cases, it also keeps you from being able to function. Broken bones, surgical procedures and other injuries that you and other Massachusetts residents suffer cause a great deal of pain that you may be able to control with medications. Opioids provide the pain relief that many people need, but it comes with an often-terrible price.

The medical community considered opioids miracle drugs, and in the 1990s, pharmaceutical companies built up that reputation as much as possible. In fact, they assured the public and the medical community that they did not pose any danger of addiction. Now, most people know that that assurance was unfounded. The addictive level of opioids surprised many people, and the data backs up the fact that the pharmaceutical companies lied.

Drunk driving is a problem all across the country. Law enforcement personnel do all they can to curb this problem but as long as people make mistakes, the longer this problem will affect millions of people. Should you ever find yourself in a drunk driving checkpoint or arrested due to impairment, you will want to do everything possible to fight the charges. So, how do you defend charges of drunk driving?

One of the most common ways people defend charges of drunk driving is using the method of an improper administration of a field sobriety test. There are a variety of tests that officers administer on the side of the road during a traffic stop. It's possible the officer wasn't properly trained to administer such a test or that the officer incorrectly administered it.

Having to pick a criminal defense attorney can be very difficult. You likely haven't needed to do this in the past and might be worried that who you pick will not work their hardest for you. This is not uncommon, and you probably have a lot of other worries too. You've been charged with a violent crime and want someone who has the experience handling such cases. You should ask the following questions of the attorney before making a decision who will represent you.

What is your experience handling cases with similar charges to mine?