In Defense of "Underage" Drinking

Mercurial Times ^ | March 1, 2002 | Aaron Armitage

[A.J.Armitage]

The situation is already bad enough. Every state in the union has already been forced by federal blackmail to raise the drinking age to 21. Now a group called the Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse is trying to whip up hysteria about the evils of people drinking a few years before they get government permission. They came out with attention getting claims that 25 percent of alcohol consumption is by "children", which to them apparently includes a number of potential voters. It turns out the real number is 11 percent, including, it should be noted, people over 18. The headlines ought to be shouting the shocking news that college students account for less than 25 percent of the drinking in America. My generation is a bunch of slackers.

The 25 percent figure was what Thomas Sowell calls an "Aha! statistic". Like the bogus statistic that domestic abuse increased on Super Bowl Sunday, it existed to boost a particular political agenda; whether it happens to be true is fundamentally beside the point. In this case, the political agenda is more warfare on substances (as if the war on drugs wasn't insane enough). The organization's web site, which greets visitors with an alternating graphic of someone smoking the devil-weed, a middle aged corporate manager type having what, by the looks of him, is a well deserved drink to relax after a hard day at the office (they're evidently so inhumane as to begrudge him this), and a girl smoking a cigarette, quotes their head control freak as saying, "This report is a clarion call for a national mobilization to curb underage drinking," while calling for various authoritarian measures such as holding parents legally responsible, "stepping up" enforcement, and, of course, higher taxes on alcohol. What fun.

One of the arguments advanced by opponents of the 21 year old drinking age is that you can't expect people to learn to drink responsibly by not letting them drink at all and then one day letting them drink all they want. Instead, children should learn to drink wine or beer with meals, as they do in Europe. There's a lot to this argument. You wouldn't expect a 16 year old to drive perfectly without practicing in parking lots first. But it's not my reason. These are my two main reasons for opposing the drinking age.

First, the government has no business telling anyone, whatever his age, what substances he can consume. Yes, that includes crack cocaine. Yes, that means no drinking age whatsoever. I got drunk on champaign on New Year's Eve when I was one year old with no ill effects. Restrictions on what a peaceful person can own, consume, sell, or produce are simply outside the proper sphere of government. Government necessarily operates by force, so the proper sphere of government is the proper sphere of force. Drinking before a certain age is not a reason to use force against someone, but if it is, which age? What sets drinking at the age of 20 apart to a degree that requires force, which is to say violence or the threat of violence, to stop it? Does it apply to 20 year olds in Canada? Did it apply to 20 year olds before the federal government imposed the 21 year drinking age? The truth is, nothing whatsoever except the law itself sets drinking by 20 year olds apart. That law is groundless; it exists as arbitrary will and nothing more. If it had pleased the makers of the law, the age would be set at 30.

Second, drinking is fun. Here, I suspect, my reason for supporting it is the very reason they oppose it. There's a significant proportion of the population that instinctively regards anything enjoyable as a sin and something the government ought to do something about, at which point they resemble the "Islamo-fascists" we've been at war against, who also hate drinking. H.L. Mencken defined Puritanism as "The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy." Now, this is grossly unfair to the Puritans, and the Reformed tradition as a whole, but that type of person existed in Mencken's time, and exists now. Far from being theological Puritans, they tend to be social gospellers or non-Christians altogether. In place of a Christian zeal for salvation, they have a zeal for social perfection.

Unfortunately, a zeal for coercively achieved social perfection always ends badly.

[freebilly]

Sow the whirlwind, reap the whirlwind.

Now, as a practical aside, very few people over the age of 21 care to have the drinking age abolished. The underage drinkers who consume 11% of the alcohol in this country will have to continue to do so in violation of the law. It may not be fair or logical that 18 year olds can get killed in battle but can't legally buy a beer, but hey, life ain't fair or logical.

[xm177e2]

The underage drinkers who consume 11% of the alcohol in this country will have to continue to do so in violation of the law

11% really isn't that much, considering that includes kids 18, 19, and 20 years old. That's just 1/9th the alcohol in America, for ALL teenagers and young adults.

From someone's 18th birthday to their 21st is 3 years. 3 years divided by 1/9th is 27 years. That means if everyone drank the same amount of alcohol every year from the age 18 until they turned 48, (and then if people over 48 drank nine times as much total as kids under 18), then underage people would be drinking 11% of the alcohol in America. 11% is really not that much at all.

We need to do something to raise this tragic figure! LEGALIZE ALCOHOL FOR 18-year-olds, NOW!

[A.J.Armitage]

Sow the whirlwind, reap the whirlwind.

So which policy now in place is sowing the whirlwind?

Now, as a practical aside, very few people over the age of 21 care to have the drinking age abolished. The underage drinkers who consume 11% of the alcohol in this country will have to continue to do so in violation of the law.

And as a practical aside from your "practical aside", they will continue to do so in violation of law.

It may not be fair or logical that 18 year olds can get killed in battle but can't legally buy a beer, but hey, life ain't fair or logical.

By which argument any and all evils can be justified. I'm reminded of the Devil's Dictionary's definition of a conservative: "A statesman who is enamored of existing evils, as distinguished from the Liberal, who wishes to replace them with others." I, of course, am neither.

[freebilly]

No, you're neither. You're a Libertarian-- which can best be described as someone who behaves like a prostitute but justifies her behavior like a attorney (The worst of all possible combinations):^)

[A.J.Armitage]

Out comes the old (and very tired) libertarian=libertine "argument". Even if it were true, it would have nothing to do with whether we're right, and it isn't true. And I'm a guy.

[Equality 7-2521]

The 25 percent figure was what Thomas Sowell calls an "Aha! statistic".

I've recently read about the Social Norming program that was tested at NIU and is now in use at more than 40 universities across the nation. I was reminded of it because of these stats and because reporting that "almost half of college students at college X are occasional binge drinkers" reinforces the misconception that every else is drinking a lot and therefore it is a social norm; whereas reporting that "greater than 50% of students never binge drink" means the exact same thing and changes the perception where social norms are concerned.

Of course the fact that this was tested at NIU brought you and this article to mind.