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Two young college women present phony identification cards and try to order alcoholic drinks at an off-campus restaurant. When police are called to the establishment, they question the students and cite them for under-age drinking offenses.
The event -- with no accidents, deaths, or riots -- appears unremarkable. But it makes national news because the young women are Jenna and Barbara Bush, the president's daughters.
Compare that "newsworthy" item to other under-age drinking stories. Every college term, we hear accounts of students who risk acute alcohol poisoning during rituals like "21 for 21" -- when, on their 21st birthdays, they down a shot of liquor for every year of their lives. In dormitory rooms and off-campus apartments, students who feel depressed hole up with bottles of alcohol, start to chug, and are lucky if their supposed cure brings nothing more than headaches and heaves. Underclassmen attend alcohol parties tied to the Big Game, drink themselves insensible, and fall to their death off balconies. It's all been in the newspapers and other media, this shocking waste of promising young lives.
The most common response to accounts of injuries or death among such "adults" -- those old enough to go to war, marry, vote, sign binding contracts, but not to buy a single draft beer -- has been to further tighten age-based prohibition. Campuses and communities step up policing measures. Task forces produce ever-more-exotic ideas about how to quarantine young students from alcoholic beverages -- even those students who demonstrate the ability to drink moderately and responsibly.
Yet despite all the countermeasures,...