If history is any guide, hundreds of recent high school graduates will be drinking enormous quantities of alcoholic beverages at celebratory parties during the next few weeks. Some of them will not have to obtain the booze themselves, nor will they have to find places to whoop it up.

Their parents will provide everything they want.

Adults who furnish alcohol for unrelated juveniles are committing crimes, of course. But they also are putting many of the young people at risk.

Some parents argue that the teenagers will be drinking at graduation parties anyway. Why not give them a “safe” place to do it?

Because hosting a booze bash for kids is not safe. Anyone who has been present at any large gathering of teenagers, even without alcohol, understands that. Try as they may to keep youngsters from leaving parties, most adults find the task is hopeless. Inevitably, some will find ways to sneak away.

When that happens after they have been drinking, the kids are in great danger. Many, with little or no experience judging how much alcohol their bodies can tolerate, will be driving while so intoxicated it will be a miracle if they do not hit something.

Most will get away with it, of course. But each year at this time, a few who did not get lucky are in the news – along with grieving classmates and parents.

If you want to help the kids celebrate, fine. Just do it safely, without alcohol. At some point in adulthood, your children will have reason to thank you.

If you reject that advice, we hope fervently that law enforcement officers crash your party and you are punished severely for putting young people in danger.