It is not often that I find myself in complete agreement with powerful people named Bush or Busch, but this is one such case. The individuals in question are President George W. Bush's daughters, Jenna and Barbara, and the head of Anheuser-Busch, August Busch.
The issue that caused this strange confluence of opinion was the investigation late last month of the Bush daughters on the suspicion of attempting to order alcohol in a restaurant. The twins are 19 years of age, which in the United States makes them too young to drink legally.
According to reports in the L.A. Times and other newspapers, police were called to a restaurant on the night of Tuesday, May 29, when the Bushes were said to have tried to order alcoholic drinks. The manager of the restaurant, called Chuy's, also alleges that Jenna Bush presented an ID card that did not belong to her. As of the morning of May 31, neither daughter had been charged in the affair.
Allow me to itemize the ridiculous elements of this story:
The restaurant manager called the police to report that some minors were trying to buy alcohol rather than simply refusing them service;
The police responded promptly to the call instead of telling the manager to stop wasting their time;
At 19 years of age, it is still illegal for these young women to buy a beer or glass of wine;
This is considered newsworthy by many of the world's top news-gathering organizations.
If ever there were a case that demonstrates the idiocy of the drinking laws in the United States, this is it. The Bush daughters are adults in almost every legal sense of the word: they can vote, they can serve in their country's armed forces, they can marry, they can buy guns. But for some completely arbitrary and inane reason, they cannot legally order an alcoholic drink in a restaurant. If they do, as it appears they might have in this instance, the cops are called, the media notified and the self-proclaimed and hopelessly misguided moral mavens sputter in outrage.
This is nuts, folks.
Setting aside for the moment the notion that there are likely far better ways for the Austin police to spend their time than chasing down underage drinkers, and I am certain there are, I am aghast at the message all this publicity is sending out to young Americans. As an analysis of the whole situation from Canada's Globe and Mail newspaper quite rightly pointed out, in pretty much any other western nation, the idea of a 19-year-old woman ordering a beer in a restaurant would not be at all controversial, much less cause for a police investigation. Yet in the United States, it is treated as a gross indiscretion and a serious violation of the law.
President Bush is on record as stating that he quit drinking on his fortieth birthday because he wished to set a good example for his daughters. Perhaps a better example would have been to explain to them the positive and negative effects of alcohol consumption and to set a good example as a moderate drinker. Or better still, he could have put pressure on the states to lower their legal drinking ages and encourage responsible alcohol education.
As August Busch suggested recently, "instead of pretending that prohibition on college campuses is realistic, we should be investing in helping those young people to make healthy and responsible choices." Which may be the only thing on which he and I are in complete agreement.
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