So, yesterday I found this article on the NYT blogs about how “parents, educators and addiction experts would react” to the multiple scenes of drinking in the new Harry Potter movie. It seemed pretty silly to me yesterday, and after seeing the movie last night, I’m downright flummoxed. Apparently the big fuss is that Harry, Hermione, and Ron go to a pub, have a “butterbeer”* or two, and relax sufficiently that Hermione puts her arm around both boys on the way back to Hogwarts.

Hermione, you drunken slut.

Honestly, what a fuss over nothing! If you’re a serious temperance advocate, go ahead and tell your kid that butterbeer is nonalcoholic, like root beer or ginger beer. Because whether you drink or not, getting away from the daily grind with your friends for a few hours will relax you. At this point in the movie, the trio desperately needs a break from the romantic, scholastic, athletic, and oh-by-the-way-Death-Eaters-are-trying-to-kill-the-world tensions that Hogwarts has come to represent. Of course they’re going to be in a more laid-back mood after a day trip to Hogsmeade. Booze isn’t the point at all.

The other objection is that teachers are seen drinking, apparently. Not so’s you’d notice, or at least not so’s I noticed, but some folks did, and they’re not happy about it. I hope they realize that if they do not want their children to be aware that professors drink, they had better avoid exposing them to any British or American literature published after World War II. They might also want to avoid exposing their children to higher education itself.

But here’s the kicker–for all the tempest in a butterbeer stein about booze, why hasn’t anyone pointed out that the entire first half of the movie is about drugs? It’s sort of unavoidable when your new main character is a Potions Master. Harry psychs Ron up for the big Quidditch match by making him believe that he’s been dosed with magic steroids, and then takes the drug–oh, sorry, “potion”–himself later in the movie. Love potions are all over the place. And the new Potions Master is not only found sneaking around the school’s “herb garden,” he knows the precise street value of certain highly valuable leaves!

If you’re going to get upset about anything, get upset about that. Because the movie doesn’t portray alcohol as doing anything other than relaxing you for an hour or so. Booze doesn’t work in the Harry Potter universe. Drugs, however, do. If the movie does have a message about substance use, it’s rather clear: Boozers are losers. What you want to do is learn how to grow and mix your own.

Now, honestly, I don’t care about any of this. I’m not a puritan about drug and alcohol use, and I’m certainly not a subscriber to the notion that all children’s entertainment must be scrubbed squeaky clean lest the child Get Ideas. (If I were taking a kid of my own to the movie, a little Miss Conduct Jr., I’d be doing a debriefing afterward, for sure. Not about the chemical substances, but about why it’s really not a good idea to fall in love with a lazy, cowardly, self-centered fellow who can’t succeed in anything without your help and then resents you for helping him. If it were a little Mr. Improbable Jr., he’d be getting the lecture on why men with quiet courage, little ego, and no fear of looking nerdy–you know, like his father, or Neville Longbottom–are the real men to be looked up to and emulated.) But if you’re going to make a big fuss about nothing, at least make a big fuss about the right nothing, eh?

*A “butterbeer,” Muggles, is a mildly alcoholic beverage, kind of like what we Kansans call “3-2 beer.” I’m sure this is what magic folk would call it, too, if they weren’t too stupid to do math. The only creatures ever known to get actually drunk from butterbeer are house elves, who are approximately a third the size of humans and have severely compromised free will to begin with.