POLICE PROBE PRINCE HARRY'S PARTYING

LONDON - He's dealt with his father's wrath.

His grandmother has forgiven him.

Now all Prince Harry has to worry about is the police.

Police in Wiltshire, England were keeping their options open Monday on
whether to pursue a case against the 17-year-old second son of Prince
Charles. News emerged over the weekend that Prince Harry had partied hard
while staying at his father's Highgrove estate last summer, sampling
marijuana at home and drinking at the nearby Rattlebone Inn with a group of
friends.

Now police say they will be looking at any available evidence to see if
there are grounds to charge the prince with a crime. They plan to treat
Prince Harry "exactly the same way" as any other underage drinker or pot
smoker, said Mandy Evely of the Wiltshire police.

Of course when you're a famous prince living in a voracious tabloid
culture, greater forces than mere police officers are around to poke into
your past and investigate your lifestyle.

"One of the newspapers said it has a dossier of evidence against him,"
Evely told BBC Radio. "We will be looking at that and, if there is any
evidence on which we can act, then of course we will.

"We want to stop young people from getting involved with drugs and alcohol."

The police are setting themselves a mighty task.

British drinking culture continues to celebrate the binge approach to
consumption, making public drunkenness more prevalent here than in other
parts of Western Europe. Saturday nights in Britain are notorious for
youths getting roaringly drunk, with many of them ending the night's
festivities throwing up outside pubs and bars. One national survey of
emergency units suggests an estimated 50,000 British children and teenagers
are being admitted to hospital casualty departments each year in
alcohol-related incidents.