I have never seen a drunk Frenchman. Children are exposed to alcohol as a basic part of the meal, without it being a big deal. After age 14, children can be served wine with dinner in a restaurant. Most of them don't bother. We've taken to having wine with most dinners.
Decent beer is available, but it's usually fairly expensive.
Corona is sold in individual bottles for about the price of a cheap bottle of wine. In the US, we would generally only have wine if we had friends over, and felt we could finish the bottle. Here, we'll open the bottle, have a glass each, and recork it. We can use it for three or four days running, and anything leftover ends up flavoring some meal. All things in moderation seems like a pretty good philosophy to me.