The news last week that 10 high school students were caught drinking at a drama festival in Rockland was, unfortunately, not surprising.

Although it was disturbing to find out these teenagers were caught by police with alcohol – not at a party or in a hotel room, away from adult supervision, but in the auditorium at the high school One Act Play Festival – the phenomenon of underage drinking has been all too common for too many years for this to be shocking to anyone. And that’s an indication of just how serious the problem is.

Incidents like these appear in the news every once in a while – often when a group of athletes gets caught, disqualifying them from the big game, as a group of Westbrook basketball players was a few years ago. Recently, it was baseball coaches at Deering High School, who got into trouble for their involvement in a party where players were drinking. In this most recent case, it just happened to be the drama club in Cape Elizabeth.

When a Current Publishing reporter interviewed parents and students at Cape Elizabeth High School Friday, reactions fell into two distinct camps – one that shrugged at the news and another that took it as yet another sign of a significant problem. Those in the former said kids make mistakes, and they learn from them. It’s been happening as long as kids have been kids, and that’s what will most likely happen here.

Perhaps the most strident in this group was a 17-year-old Cape Elizabeth student who said essentially: High school kids are going to drink. Get over it. Move on.

Others, however, said moving on might just be masking a more serious problem many parents might not want to admit exists – the fact that a significant number of teenagers drink regularly, and drink to excess. In 2005, about 28 percent of teenagers reported drinking in the previous month, and about 19 percent reported binge drinking, according to statistics from the group SADD (Students Against Drunk Driving).

Statistics like these are not shocking or even surprising. Teen drinking rates have been high for years, and that shows just how ineffective existing laws and educational programs have been at curbing the behavior. That shouldn’t lead, however, to acceptance.

Alcohol is one of the most common contributing factors to the three leading causes of death for 15- to 24-year-olds – car crashes, homicides and suicides. Those who start consuming it at a young age are four times as likely to become alcoholics. At the very least, it is the basis for an unhealthy relationship with alcohol – drinking only to get drunk. In the Rockland case a couple weeks ago, one underage student was hospitalized for alcohol poisoning.

These incidents are opportunities to initiate a larger discussion about a problem that isn’t going away and address some of the root questions behind it. Why, for example, do so many teenagers binge drink and take risks? And how can parents and educators promote safer behavior and a healthier relationship with alcohol?

Teenagers are obviously not going to stop drinking completely, but if we don’t ask questions like these, the incident in Rockland is one act we’re going to watch again and again – and occasionally with a tragic ending.

Brendan Moran, editor