"I thought you'd understand, dad."

"Why?"

"Because when you were a teenager, you went to the woods, too."

"Well, yes, I do understand. And that's why you can't go to the woods."

"You're a hypocrite."

To riff on the line Stan Mack used to use for his Real Life Funnies strip in the Village Voice, all dialogue is guaranteed to have been engaged an hour or so ago with my 16-year-old son, Duncan.

It was a first-game-of-the-football-season-there's-probably-a-party-tonight ritual going on all over America. In my dreams, at least. I wonder how many parents are actually not only asking their kids where they are going at night but also calling their bluff when they appear to by lying? And if they catch them in their lies, how many are serving up consequences?

If you listen to Duncan, absolutely no one.

"You're the only parents who feels this way," he told me. "You're going up against all of Hastings."

I'd already made it clear that although he thinks that everyone is drinking in the woods, or at unsupervised house parties, he's just not looking for the kids who don't. It seemed fruitless to make the point that we aren't the only parents who feel that drinking shouldn't be a required course for high school. Or middle school, for that matter.

In our case, we've made it clear that if Duncan drinks, or evens hangs out at a keg or an unsupervised house party, he's not going to be driving an automobile any time soon. The lure of the culture of the keg is so strong, however, that I'm not sure that this threat will be enough to stop him from talking the risk.

Our conversation in the car this afternoon was right out of the textbook of kids pushing the limits as far as they can because that's their job.

"I don't drink myself."

"I go to take care of my friends in case they drink too much."

"It's the only way to socialize. There's nothing else to do."

"What you're telling me is that you don't trust any of my friends."

I was driving Duncan to the American Legion Hall in Harrison, where he has a performance of Macbeth tonight. As we were pulling up, I asked him why he hadn't responded to our offer to bring a couple of his friends to see him on stage. None of them had been to the shows in Untermeyer Park earlier this summer.

"Because I want them to have fun, dad," he said. "It's Saturday night."

That pretty much sums up where the whole conversation was coming from, and going. Sadly, so many teen relationships are built on the tenuous foundation of being one of the gang, rather than on a mutual respect for each others' interests and endeavors.

Culturally, teens mimic adults, of course. And when adults get together en masse, they do drugs — illegal and legal. All I'd need to do to confirm that is to turn on a sporting event. As soon as there's a commercial, you can be sure they'll be a group of (young) adults getting ready to "socialize" with a bottle of whatever.

The Journal of Public Health Policy last week released a series of papers that deal with alcohol marketing and youth from a public health standpoint. If you read no others, take a look at the editors' introduction and former FDA chairman David Kessler's commentary. All of the articles will remain online for free until February.

Here are the opening paragraphs of the introduction:

If you've tooled around Elephant on Main Street, you've seen similar information. But we've got a long way to go before most people understand how serious a threat alcohol is to their children.

The day before these papers came out, I met a village trustte at the supermarket. He talked about an article that ran about our family in the local newspaper after Saving Carrick aired. Then he asked the question on the minds of village elders everywhere.

"Do you think we have a serious drug problem here?"

"Yes, I do," I responded. "I know that the police say that the incidents are down in the woods, but I think that kids are just drinking elsewhere, and that it's as bad as it has been."

"I don't mean drinking,' he said. "I mean drugs like heroin and meth. And pot, though not so much. But cocaine."

So I gave my little speech about alcohol being just as much a drug as the other substances, as well as being just as potentially lethal — and more dangerous to most of "our" kids because it was much more prevalent.

"I really don't think we have a serious heroin or meth or cocaine problem here," I said. "But alcohol use is rampant."

I don't know if I convinced him, although he did allow that binge drinking seemed to be much worse nowadays than when we were kids. Most people who say that follow up with the argument that the drinking age should be reduced to 18, as it was when we was growing up. The premise is that college-age kids would not binge drink if they could take a glass of Chablis whenever they wanted to chill and discuss Kant. He didn't make that argument, which is good. I 'm doing my damnedest to keep my equilibrium when talking to people who just don't have a clue.

Of course, if you listen to Duncan, I'm the most clueless man in the New York metropolitan region.

I'm listening to him. But I'm not buying.