A new law will imposing a mandatory one-year driver's license suspension for anyone convicted of buying alcohol for underage drinkers went into effect Saturday. In addition, anyone convicted of using fake identification for the purposes of obtaining, purchasing or consuming alcohol will face the same penalty.
The law was championed by Mothers Against Drunk Driving as a way to reduce underage drinking and drunk driving by cutting off the source of alcohol.
"If we have people blatantly breaking the law and no penalties for that, we need to make sure there are some [penalties] in place," said Chris Konschack, the executive director for MADD Virginia and MADD D.C.
Before this law went into effect, providing alcohol to someone under the age of 21 was a class one misdemeanor which carried a maximum sentence of one year in jail or a $2500 fine, according to University Police Captain Michael Coleman.
"However, this is not usually the sentence for the first offence," said Coleman.
MADD and members of the General Assembly felt that these current penalties were not harsh enough to discourage people from violating the law.
"[We need] penalties that have an impact," said Konschack. "People aren't impacted by monetary fines. Losing driving privileges has a little more substance."
State Sen. Creigh Deeds, D-Charlottesville, said he voted in favor of the new law because he felt it was necessary to enhance current regulations.
"I think there has to be deterrent out there," Deeds said. "One more obstacle from putting alcohol in hands of people who can't legally posses it."
However, some people, especially students, feel that the stricter laws wouldn't have much effect.
"It's not a great way of accomplishing [less underage drinking]," said Kevin Richards, a third year Engineering student. "While I understand why the law is in place, I don't think it will do much to curb underage drinking because it will be hard to enforce."
Coleman, Deeds and Konschack all stressed that underage drinking, even in small numbers is a problem and the number one goal of this kind of legislation is to discourage such behavior.
"Any underage drinking is a problem," Coleman said. "[I would] like to see number decrease."
While the aim of this new law is to decrease underage drinking, it's too early to see if it will have that effect.
"Bills get passed every year that aim to put out a deterrent effect on criminal activity -- just give this bill a year or two to see how it's going to work," Deeds said.
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