Youth: The Drinking Problem

There was nothing particularly unusual about it, unfortunately: a couple of nice kids, driving home from a couple of good parties, went off the road. She was killed, he was not. Everybody felt terrible. Then last week—three months after the accident—some thing happened that made the sad, unnecessary death of Nancy Hitchings, 17, of Half Mile Road, Darien, Conn., a matter of national controversy. Circuit Court Judge Rodney S. Eielson, presiding over the trial of 18-year-old Michael Smith for reckless driving and negligent homicide, ordered the arrest of 14 adults for serving alcohol at the two parties that Michael...