THE LOGIC OF RESPONSIBILITY

So far this month, two university students in Colorado have died after
drinking too much alcohol. Many people think this means that somebody
should do something to prevent future tragedies like this, but what?

The law does not appear to be much help here. It is already illegal to
drink alcohol in Colorado if you are under 21. One student was 18 and
the other 19, so they were already breaking the law, as were the
people who provided them with alcohol.

Sure, there will be calls for new and improved laws with stiffer
penalties. But if the current laws are not enforced, why should we
think that stricter laws would be enforced? And if they could be, it
would doubtless take more law-enforcement personnel, which means
higher taxes.

What form would a new law take? The only effective one that comes to
mind is making it a felony to be in the same room where a minor drinks
alcohol, and thus require everyone to check every ID, just to be on
the safe side.

However, it is hard to imagine even our legislature passing something
like that, and even if that were the law, there is always the problem
of the fake ID.

During my college days, I sometimes checked IDs at the door of a 3.2
joint (back then, 18-year-olds could drink 3.2 beer in Colorado, a
practice that ended a few years ago when our legislature bent over for
the federal government). Since the Weld County Sheriff's Department
was always looking for an excuse to close these dens of iniquity and
rock 'n' roll, I was quite conscientious.

Once you passed the ID test and paid the cover charge, your hand was
stamped so that you could come and go. Sometimes a person would get
stamped, then go outside and give his ID to someone who resembled him,
who would then come through.

One night, after a name started to get too familiar, I got to the
microphone just before the band resumed after a break, and asked,
"Will the real Gloria Gonzales please stand up?" Three young women
headed for the door.

As the failure of Prohibition demonstrated, not even amending the U.S.
Constitution, let alone passing a mere state law, will keep people
from drinking alcohol if they chose to do so.

There remains, however, the question of individual responsibility. In
the two recent Colorado cases, one had been participating in a
fraternity initiation, and the other was party-hopping. Both are
voluntary activities.

Now we encounter a logical problem. If we assume that 18-year-olds are
of sufficient intelligence to know when they are drinking too much,
then it follows that they are old enough to drink.

If we assume that 18-year-olds lack that knowledge, then it follows
that neither student is responsible, and we should find some other
party to blame - i.e., beer ads, the fraternity system (both were
found dead in frat houses), a "party school" social environment,
aggressive marketing by retail liquor merchants, to name a few that I
have seen recently.

Logic demands one or the other.

Logic, however, has nothing to do with how America runs, especially in
this regard. According to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and
Alcoholism, about 350 Americans die every year from accidental alcohol
poisoning. In all of recorded history, not one person has ever died of
a marijuana overdose.

So guess which substance is illegal.

That begs the question, though, since the law already forbids minors
from drinking themselves to death. Perhaps we need a new attitude.
Drunken driving decreased as a result of social pressure from slogans
like "Friends don't let friends drive drunk."

And perhaps, around America's fraternity houses, where young people
are supposed to learn to care of one another, they could post slogans
like "Friends don't let friends pass out and die."