allaboutwomen

So the federal government is spending a bunch of money to get us to, as The Boston Globe-Democrat puts it, “respect the legal drinking age of 21.”

Good luck with that.

The 21-year-old drinking age is the 55 miles per hour speed limit of our time: A law too stupid to be obeyed.

This new federal program - “We Don’t Serve Teens” - wants you to focus on drinking by high schoolers. Now few people object to laws against drinking by children. They’re not 18, so they’re not adults.

But because the MADD ladies of the neo-Prohibitionist movement insist on lumping in adults under 21, there is virtually no respect for their cause. Of course 20-year-old college students drink beer. They’re supposed to. Of course a 19-year-old just back from Afghanistan has a Bud or two. Only a total jerk would try to stop him.

Criminalizing the consumption of alcohol by adults is utter nonsense. The only nations dumb enough to do it are the kind where they also stone adulteresses to death and issue fatwas for writing the wrong kinds of books.

Americans are never going to accept this, no matter how much money the Federal Trade Commission shakes down liquor companies (The “We Don’t Serve Teens” effort is largely funded by the adult beverage industry).

And so we ignore it. Nanny-staters are outraged that underage drinkers almost never buy their own alcohol. “Most teens report that alcohol is ‘fairly easy’ or ‘very easy’ to get,” says wedontserveteens.gov. When you’re talking about 14-year-olds, that’s a problem. But 18, 20? Who has ever seen a 19-year-old having a glass of Chianti with his chicken cacciatore and thought “Somebody call the police - it’s an outrage!”

I know what you’re saying. The young woman having wine with dinner isn’t the problem - it’s the gang of sorority girls puking out the back of the team bus. And the Centers for Disease Control reports that “on average, underage drinkers consume more drinks per drinking occasion than adult drinkers.” In other words, binge drinking.

So what happens after 21 to stop the binge drinking? Do college students suddenly get tired of sucking keg hoses? Do 23-year-old construction workers lose their thirst for the entire six pack?

Or is it that we’ve turned drinking into a stunt, a game, an activity in and of itself, where part of the thrill is to put it away as fast as possible?

We’re Americans. We know how to drink. In fact, that’s the biggest challenge for the “respect the law” crowd: personal experience.

Did you drink when you were 19 or 20? Of course you did. We all did - and we didn’t all end up hooked on heroin or dead in the streets. Of course we drank in college or after work, or while on shore leave or anywhere else you’d end up after high school.

It was part of being an adult. Only, we don’t make adults anymore.

No, we have college kids with “helicopter moms” who check their homework, and 25-year-olds still on their parents’ health care and 30-year-olds living in dad’s basement.

You say a 20-year-old of today can’t handle a beer? Well, whose fault is that?