Posted on 11/29/2002 10:07:06 AM PST by NorCoGOP
COLUMBUS, Ohio -- The recent riots near the Ohio State University campus were, as all similar riots have been, an inexcusable abomination. Students arrested for their involvement should be expelled. Students and non-students who were involved should spend time in jail.
City officials in the future would be justified in instituting a curfew to keep people off the streets after football games to prevent similar occurrences. University officials should seriously consider suspending the Buckeyes' participation in postseason play as a result of fans' actions.
That being said, President Holbrook has asked what can be done about the nationwide problem of college student riots. One answer, paradoxically, is to lower the drinking age to 18.
The current law that sets the drinking age at 21 does not prevent a single college student from getting alcohol if one wants it. What the law does do is label something "illegal" that virtually every college student between the ages of 18 and 20 does at least occasionally. When this unreasonable law turns students into lawbreakers when they drink, it causes respect for the law to decline. (For another, well-known example of this phenomenon, recall the Prohibition Era in the 1920s United States.)
When one is already engaging in "illegal behavior" simply by drinking, a relevant line has already been crossed, and it becomes easier to engage in other forms of illegal behavior, particularly when one's judgment is impaired by alcohol. Obviously it doesn't work this way for everyone, but the student riots that our president has described as "national and ongoing" seem to provide ample evidence that it works this way for a significant number of people.
Lowering the drinking age to 18 would allow larger numbers of college students to drink socially in more supervised settings such as bars, and even on campus. Not as many would turn to illicit off-campus parties where sexual assaults, exploitation and other forms of injury are all too common. I'm sure that Columbus law enforcement would agree riots would be much easier to control and prevent if the masses of students who currently fuel them were not present on the streets.
Lowering the drinking age to 18 would also allow our university residence life and student affairs professionals to treat drinking realistically and constructively as an issue of student health and welfare, rather than as a discipline issue. For students with serious, life-impairing drinking problems, this would be a life-saving shift.
Lowering the drinking age to 18 would allow younger students to socialize more with older students, allowing older students to model responsible, more mature social drinking behavior. Over time, this would help to change the culture surrounding drinking among our young people.
Many argue that lowering the drinking age would cause the number of drinking-and-driving-related injuries and deaths to skyrocket. However, if this is the problem about which we are concerned, then this is the issue our law should address. We should not discriminate against an entire age cohort of citizens because of the harmful actions of a minority, particularly when there are serious negative consequences to doing so. If we are serious about preventing drinking-and-driving, then we need to do the following things:
A first offense must be a felony, regardless of whether any injury or property damage resulted, and must result in both jail time and a multi-year drivers license suspension. A second offense must result in permanent license revocation, and a long jail term.
We must make a national effort to make driving after drinking absolutely unacceptable and to make alternative forms of transportation and accommodation readily available.
When 18-year-olds can vote, can marry, defend our country in the military, and are considered adults in our society in every other way, not allowing them to drink is an absurd legal and social incongruity. As the riots and the other negative consequences discussed above demonstrate, the effects of this law are not trivial.
While the law has reduced the numbers of young people who kill and are killed in drinking related car accidents, it has spawned and exacerbated a host of other social ills. There are other ways to keep people from drinking and driving if we are serious about it.
Young people should organize and demand the law be changed. Older people should support them, and our leaders should hear them and act in our collective best interest by reducing the drinking age to 18.
The states all raised 'em again.
I remember this distinctly: I turned 18 just a couple of years after lowering the age became the "in thing," and though I don't drink I had plenty of friends who did, and two were killed in drinking-related traffic accidents.
I think the author is forgetting that 50 laws would have to be changed, and 50 legislatures would have to in unison tell the feds that there will be dire consequences for withdrawing highway funds.
Not that I dont support this, but the auther may think there is some national alcohol age limit.
LOL!! You are so melodramatic.
The maturity level would increase.
What's a little hyperbole between friends, eh?
Already tried it where? The drinking ages have gone up but I never heard of them going back down again.
The drinking age of 21 has been a complete disaster for all the reasons cited above. Under 21 drinking has been driven underground, forcing young adults to drink away from responsible adult supervision, where they often get into more trouble. The "forbidden fruit" syndrome encourages young adults to drink more than they normally would had they legally had access to it, because they do not know when they might have access to it again and thus want to take full advantage of the current situation.
This age 21 madness took hold in the early 1980s when I was serving in the Marine Corps. The military decided to keep the beer flowing in the enlisted clubs regardless of age, because otherwise, servicemen might go out in town and get into trouble. It was a smart move and many lives (not to mention careers) were undoubtably saved. When young people are drinking among elders, they have pressure to drink more responsibly because they don't want to be perceived as lushes or losers by people who they respect. Get a bunch of 18-19-20-year-olds together with a keg of beer and no elders around - which is what happens when you make it illegal for elders to be around - and you have the ingredients for disaster.
People do not magically become responsible drinkers at the arbitrary age of 21. It takes most people a few years to learn their limits with respect to alcohol. It is so important to have responsible adults around during these years. You don't simply hand your kid the keys to the car when he turns old enough to drive. You spend a lot of time with him first, ensuring that he or she is comfortable behind the wheel. So it should be with drinking as well.
The states all raised 'em again.
Why did the states raise the drinking age Illboy? Why are you such a dunderhead statist?
Then you're not very old. The drinking age in most states was 21 years old prior to the 1970s. During the Vietnam War, the argument was often heard that if we expect kids to fight for their country, we ought to allow them the privileges of adulthood. During this time the voting age was lowered to 18, and many--probably most--states began lowering their drinking ages.
I went to college in Wisconsin, a year or so after the age was lowered to 18. I distinctly recall a Friday evening ritual at the college rathskeller called "Senior Drink." It was so-called because previously of course you had to be at least 21 to participate--the typical age of the senior college student.
The name stuck even though now, all could participate.
By the end of the 1970s, the statistics on traffic fatalities involving drunk drivers ages 18 to 21 were up so alarmingly that the states took another look at the trend.
Congress acted, and forced the age back up.
You need to remember (before you start yelling about Democrats) that this was the time when the Democrat party was considered the "party of youth," and the Democrats were the ones who had spearheaded lowering both the voting and the drinking ages.
So this was a popular mandate. People got tired of the bloodbath, as I mentioned.
So now you know the history that occurred BEFORE (apparently) you were born--since I've noticed a lot of FReepers seem to think that nothing much of interest happened before their date of birth.
It isn't "statist", btw, to recognize that the Constitution gives the states the right to regulate what goes on in their borders.
I guess I could ask why you're such an irrational nihilist, but that'd be pointless, wouldn't it?
BS.
Well, it's true...dammit!
Oh, this is rich. Like, obviously the PARENTS have failed to do this, but by lowering the drinking age, these self appointed older student guardians will do the job! HA!
I guess I was lucky, as Texas gradually increased the drinking age, and I was just ahead by a few months, so I've never had the bummer feeling of being a "college student" and forced to illegally purchase alcohol..
When this unreasonable law turns students into lawbreakers when they drink, it causes respect for the law to decline.
Um, yeah. Riiiight. Like, when underage drinking is outlawed, only youthful outlaws will be drunk?
Pookie & ME
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