Should You Drink with Your Kids?

The effort to stamp out underage alcohol use has failed, creating a culture in which young people binge in secret. John Cloud suggests there's a better way

Emely / zefa / Corbis

I was 14 the first time I got falling-down drunk. I was attending summer golf camp at the University of Arkansas. It was 1985, and a preternaturally talented young golfer named John Daly was my camp counselor. This was six years before Daly won the PGA Championship as a rookie. He would also become famous for his drinking, but in 1985 he was still just a big kid, five years older than I was but not especially more mature.

One night he acquired a bottle of Canadian whiskey, and somehow we persuaded three girls from the tennis camp to join us...

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