> "I don't drink because I don't want to and I'm comfortable with that choice, but it's okay if you want to do something different" seems like a much healthier mindset.

Possibly. It's certainly a healthier place to arrive at, and it's where I'm at now as an adult. But I'm unsure if it's a strong enough position to get a kid through the intense peer pressures of middle and high school.

The difficulty that I see is that in order to truly hold that position as you describe it you have to have a really strong sense of self, which adolescents pretty much by definition don't have. Our brains aren't fully developed until 25, and in the developing stages our own sense of identity is pretty weak, and in those weak stages we all reach out for something larger than ourselves to hold on to.

The 'superiority' approach (which I put in air quotes because no one ever actually said "we're better", it was a very subtle thing) gives the adolescent a strong identity they can adopt while they're still molding one of their own—it gives them a tribe to which they already belong. You can work with them from there to have empathy for people in other tribes, but if you give them something thinner and less tribal right away, even if it's healthier in an adult, I would expect them to end up drawn to a tribe offered by their peers.

"You do you" doesn't work at some point. The drinking kids will exclude the one kid who refuses, even if only passively (sober surrounded by drunk). It really matters who the peers are. Fortunately, there are always ways to find new peers.

What about the harder ones that come up? A personal choice like that is easy, but

“I don’t drink when I know I’ll have to drive home because…”

It’s harder to empathize with those who do drink in that situation

It’s definitely not something that you should do on purpose

> "I don't drink because I don't want to and I'm comfortable with that choice, but it's okay if you want to do something different"

That was basically my high-horse libertarian mindset in high school when I saw other kids using cannabis-- I straight-up said to at least one, "I'm not going to do that, but I don't mind if you do." I thought I was being socially liberal and polite.

Spoiler alert, everyone else "wanted to do something different" and no longer cared about me after I respectfully removed myself from "the cool stuff" without condemning it. Today, I'm much more vocally negative towards cannabis users.