by Michael Massing

About the author: Journalist Michael Massing is a contributing editor of the Columbia Journalism Review and the author of The Fix: Solving the Nation’s Drug Problem.

Shortly after 9 o’clock in the morning of Dec. 3, 1997, the 14 members of the Governor’s Task Force on Driving While Intoxicated and Vehicular Homicide took their seats in a hearing room in the Louisiana State Capitol Building in Baton Rouge. The issue before them: whether the state should add a provision to Louisiana’s drinking law that would prohibit 18- to 20-year-olds from entering bars. The law currently allows them into bars, even while it prohibits them from buying or drinking alcohol. The law is widely flouted, however, and most of the task-force members—highway officials, state legislators, local...