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Debating the Drinking Age
By Laura Knoy on Monday, August 25, 2008.
There’s a new movement to lower the drinking age from 21 back to 18, and it comes from an unlikely corner: the presidents of more than 100 colleges and universities, who say the law encourages underage and clandestine drinking on campus. But not everyone’s bellying up to the bar on this notion. We’ll hear from both sides of the debate.
Guests
- John McCardell, founder of the Amethyst Initiative, an organization made up of chancellors and presidents of universities and colleges across the country looking to lower the drinking age
- Lydia Valliere, Director and Victim Advocate for the New Hampshire Division of Mothers Against Drunk Driving
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My 2 children attend Concord High School and they tell me that drinking at the high school is "every party, every weekend." The college administrators are just pointing out the "facts on the ground." Teenagers drink. Focusing enforcement efforts on safe drinking, restricting drinking to older teens, and not driving would be more productive than an outright, unenforceable ban.
What if the drinking age were 18 for those who could produce a valid high school diploma, while those who could not had to wait an extra year or two? It may be logistically awkward early on, but it could solve several problems: having 18 year-olds who are able to buy alcohol while still in high school is not ideal; many high school drop outs leave during their senior year, a number which would plummet if they knew that beer awaited them, etc. It may sound overly complicated, but with some thought, it could be done well.
Research has shown that binge drinking is more common among college freshman and sophomores than among juniors and seniors. Binge drinking is one manifestation of risk-taking behavior that accompanies adolescence. MRI studies of the adolescent brain show evidence of continuing brain maturation into the early twenties and beyond.
It behooves colleges, therefore, to provide instruction on the responsible use of alcohol regardless of the legal drinking age. Would it not be reasonable to encourage, if not require, all first term college freshmen to take a course on alcohol so as to understand better its effect on themselves and society?
This is not a personal responsibility issue-it is about public health health and public safety. We tried this back in the mid-70's through 1984 and what we saw is that states that had 18 as the drinking age had higher motor vehicle fatality rates among young people. It is a failed experiment, why do we want to revisit a failed experiment?
I would be interested to know whether this Amethyst initiative receives funding from the alcohol industry in any form?
I would encourage your guest from MADD to visit Europe and get involved with the local culture and customs in order to really learn how they treat alcohol, her perception is not correct. I am 25 and just returned from 3 months in Italy where I met many locals between the ages of 16-30. Alcohol is respected as an element of their culture. They have all had wine with dinner since they were children. They do not go out at night to "get drunk," but they do have a drink socially when gathering with friends. Drunk Driving is not as prevalent as she believes. This is possibly because the public transportation system is excellent! Alcohol is always going to be present, what has MADD done to increase safe transportation?
Also, I think that there need to be more faith in 18-20 year olds to be responsible. I spent 6months in England when I was 19 and was not out of control at bars every night, but it was nice to be able to go into a restaurant and have a beer with dinner and at social gatherings!
While listening to the debate, it seems the Lydia Valliere is more interested in prohibition than drunk driving.
I also find it unfortunate that no one in the opposition was listening to the assertion made by John McCardell that Amethyst was not in favor of lowering the drinking age to 18, just requesting a debate on the effectiveness of this law. I personally think it would be appropriate to be able to discuss this issue, judging by the heated debate.
The problem with this whole debate is that is is generally couched as an either/or. Either the drinking age is 18 or it's 21.
If instead we treated drinking like driving there would be a much finer degree of control.
I and others have proposed a drinking license to be issued at age 18, perhaps only with parental permission.
This license would be like a learner's permit in driving and could be taken away in the event of irresponsible behavior with regard to alcohol.
Peer pressure would help insure people don't lose their license because then they would lose access to a tremendous number of social opportunities with their more responsible friends.
See sites like this for further discussion:
http://www2.potsdam.edu/hansondj/YouthIssues/1048680374.html
This is your brain on moderation ... this is your brain on prohibition - any questions?
This show barely scratched the surface of the arguments, especially the argument about the civil rights of 18 year olds. A caller tried to mention the unfairness of 18 year olds having all the rights and responsibilities of citizenship except in this one area. Laura said "We've already discussed that." Actually that subject had been mentioned but not discussed in any depth whatsoever. This kind of bullet point, checklist oriented structure is not worthy of the subject and is too frequently found on this kind of program.
for 18 years old to be able to run for president or rent cars as there is drinking? This notion that we bestow full adult privileges on 18 year olds because we allow them to vote and join the military is nonsense. An 18 year old can't rent a car or be president but yet nobody is crying foul about that. My two cents-Mr. McCardell and his buddies just want the underage drinking problem on their campuses to be somebody else's problem. As for this notion that they don't have this problem in Europe and all of the anecdotal stories that accompany it-All i say is look at the research and it will tell you that they have a much bigger problem with this than we do.
18 year olds can hold office and even 34 year olds cannot run for president, but I doubt anyone would claim someone of that age was not an adult. As for car rentals, there are lots of under 25 people who complain about it, its just not a national issue.
To what research are you referring? What "bigger problems" does Europe have? With a quick search on the internet, I found statistics on alcoholism by country (cureresearch) and it looks like the rates by percentage are close from one country to the next.
here is one http://captus.samhsa.gov/central/documents/2Europedrinkresponsibly.pdf (of many) that highlight the point that binge drinking rates are higher in the european countries that we always hear about in terms of responsible 18 year olds drinking. If they are more responsible it would be rational to assume that we (the US) would have the higher binge drinking rates among youth since we are "driving it underground".
Your examples are irrelevant, but thanks for at least debating the civil rights issue.
First of all, the age limit for car rentals isn't, as far as I know, set by federal threat of withholding highway funds and varies from state to state as well as rental company to rental company. (Free markets and state autonomy are usually a good thing.) Second the presidential age limit is such a special case that you are clearly struggling.
The idea that you can fight a war and not drink a single legal beer is actually the height of "nonsense" to a great many people - which is why military bases have, in the past, seen exceptions to this arbitrary and punitive prohibition.
The research you cite is also irrelevant for two reasons. First for every country and study that proves your point there is one that fails to. Secondly, and most importantly, the civil rights issue trumps the practical one.
We could lower the highway death rate to zero by outlawing cars, but we don't. Is that immoral? Think of the millions of lives it would eventually save!
Finally, this idea that the college presidents just want it to be somebody else's problem is also nonsense. It already is someone else's problem. (Do you think high school drinking won't start until it's legal for college students? Too late.) The presidents just want the ability to deal with drinking in a sane way rather than the absurd measures required by prohibition.
Most arguments for keeping the drinking age 21, including those mentioned on the show today, can only result in total prohibition of alcohol for everyone if their premises are followed to their inevitable conclusion.
Prohibition? Are you kidding? We have had a federal minimum age since 1984. This has nothing to do with prohibition. If the inevitable result is prohibition then why aren't we there yet?
The fact that we are crazy enough to send 18 year olds to war is really the height of nonsense. Also-to dismiss the minimum age required to run for president is just as arbitrary a case to make as the drinking age. I can DIE for my country at 18, but I cant be president.
The fact is that the stats support the drinking age where it is. If you lower it to 18 I can guarantee yo that there will be an even worse problem in our high schools--since there are 18 year olds in high schools-who will be the most popular kids in their class for obvious reasons.
This debate really isn't worth debating. If it ain't broke-don't fix it. I get the sense that the only people clamoring for this debate are the 100 college presidents and a large body of 18-20 years olds.
It IS broken- that's the whole point of this debate.
I will agree that allowing 18 year olds legal access to alcohol likely will enable more middle and high schoolers to drink. However, there are several other issues that need to be addressed including better enforcement of DUI laws, parental control and education, and an effort within the culture to make it less desirable to binge drink. Those should be in place reguardless of drinking age. This seems to be the goal of the Amethyst Initiative- to open debate and make more effective changes.
There have been states since 1984 attempting to maintain an 18 drinking age. Wisconsin and Lousiana both had at least a de facto 18 drinking age until the 1990s. LA finally bowed to federal pressure to chage it in 1995 and I, a transplanted New Orleanian, have little doubt that LA would go back to an 18 drinking age if there were no federal consequences.
Obviously it is "broke" or these college presidents and millions of other Americans, including many parents of 18-20 year olds, wouldn't be raising this question.
Obviously the subject is worth debating or you and I and others wouldn't spend time posting about it. Your dismissive attitude is shared by all too many on your side of the argument. It was pretty amusing on the show when a caller pointed out that at a recent conference on youth drinking the subject of lowering the age hadn't come up. This was supposed to be making the point that it's a bad idea when in fact it exactly proved the point Amethyst is making: even just bringing up the question is disallowed in the current climate.
The self-inflicted coup de grace is your statement that it's all ok because really only the victims of the law are the ones who are upset with it. This is both inaccurate and manages to miss the entire purpose of civil rights and minority protection - the very cornerstone of our constitutional system. Of course the people affected by the law are the ones most concerned! What do you expect? Who do you think was most upset about segregation?
And, of course, there are lots of others annoyed by the law. Non-college presidents in their forties (like me) who in the 1980s saw vividly the difference between places where the age was 18 and where it was 21, also happen to find the current situation silly, shamelessly puritanical, and unfair on its face.
I could go on, but it's pretty clear we're not going to change each other's minds about this.
Don't lose any sleep over it. Your side has pretty much all the grumpy police chiefs, vengeful state's attorneys, hypocritical media people, cowardly clergy and pandering politicians, so the status quo is destined to continue indefinitely.