Posted on 09/09/2008 2:29:35 PM PDT by neverdem
What happens when presidents from more than 100 of the nation's best-known colleges call on lawmakers to consider lowering the drinking age from 21 to 18? Well, a brigade of hyperbolic mommies start screaming at them, that's what.
In the Amethyst Initiative, college presidents have offered a rational, if counterintuitive, plan. Let's stop treating young adults like wards of the state. Mothers Against Drunk Driving (naturally) replied: No debate allowed.
There is plenty of empirical evidence suggesting that the drinking age of 21 is counterproductive. To begin with, it bars parents from educating their own children about alcohol and, like all prohibitions, it fosters criminality.
"Kids are going to drink whether it's legal or illegal," explains Johns Hopkins President William R. Brody. "We'd at least be able to have a more open dialogue with students about drinking as opposed to this sham, where people don't want to talk about it because it's a violation of the law."
Sham, indeed. It begins with the demonization of alcohol. (Mothers Against Drunk Driving once compared alcohol to heroin.) Imbibing is a satisfying and highly pleasurable way to spend a couple of hours. It is completely harmless for the majority of adults. Let's not pretend otherwise.
And by outlawing even the moderate use of alcohol among young adults, society creates a forbidden fruit. It drives students off campus and underground. It creates an incentive to drink as much as possible in the shortest amount of time possible.
According to the presidents, the drinking age has "created an environment of excess consumption and goal-oriented drinking. While fewer individuals aged 18-20 are drinking, those who choose to drink are doing so at dangerous and alarming rates."
Perhaps if young adults were allowed to experience the effects of alcohol in a controlled environment, they would be less inclined to binge later. (Binge drinking, incidentally, is usually defined as the consumption of five or more drinks in a row by men and four or more drinks in a row by women. Let he among us without sin . . . .)
The present drinking age, it can be noted, treats 18- to 20-year-old adults as if they were criminals, pre-emptively outlawing them from partaking in a legal product that other adults — even adults convicted of drunk driving or serious felonies — can enjoy legally.
Every state has the authority to set its own drinking age. They won't. After the 1984 Congress passed the National Minimum Drinking Age Act, the government blackmailed states by threatening to take away 10 percent of federal highway funding.
There is no politician who has the audacity to take on MADD, anyway. No one wants to be accused of willfully hurting children.
Yet, even if MADD were right, the safety of the "children" should never be the sole basis for public policy. Call them naïve or idealistic, but there are still people in this country who believe the word "freedom" matters as well.
If I may indulge, let's extrapolate on a cliche: It's regularly pointed out that young adults can volunteer to serve in Iraq but are prohibited from buying a beer. But young adults are also free to produce children (many children). A young adult can plan the entire course of his or her life by the age of 21. A young adult can serve on a jury and determine the fate a fellow citizen. If a young adult chooses, he or she can act in pornographic films, gamble nightly, smoke several packs of cigarettes or, in some places, even engage in the truly depraved act of becoming a politician.
Yet this same young adult is breaking the law when ordering an appletini?
It makes little sense. And when a large number of college presidents ask, "How many times must we re-learn the lessons of Prohibition?" the answer is: We never learned the lesson the first time.
By lowering the drinking age the colleges remove all liability from their administrations for alcohol related deaths.
To hell with the students is their mantra.
Why not let the underage drive too. 14 sounds like a good age to drive. Get them a pillow so they can see over the steering wheel.
And what could be better for the old goats who troll the bars looking for young girls. Just let them drink, they’re easier prey.
Unenforceable prohibitions, prohibited only because it has been declared illegal and not because it is intrinsically evil, only serves to foster contempt for law.
I’m not even sure why there IS a drinking age. I’ve been drinking since my dad would give me a beer starting when I was about 8 and I’ve never been an alcoholic, drunk driver, etc. Seems like the government oversteps their jurisdiction on this one, IMHO.
Amazingly, this is one area where liberals aren’t clamoring for us to emulate the sopposedly enlightened Euros. Go figure.
You hit the nail on the head.
Perhaps we should do away with age limits for anything. If 18 is old enough, why not 16? If 16 is old enough, why not 14? Etc...
susie
Agreed.
Once again two subsets of the Democratic Party will have divergent opinions on an issue.
I see a trade in the works.
A lower drinking age for a higher driving age, thereby setting the age of consent at 18 across the board.
The driving age should be 18 regardless of what the drinking age is.
Just glad I don’t drink.
If you are old enough to put your life on the line for America’s freedom and safety, then you are old enough to have a drink.
At 18 you are a legal adult. If you are out of the house, then go for it.
I’m fine with that, but the 21 drinking age is an abject farce and an outright failure.
14 can drive farm equipment.
Actually lowering the drinking age wouldn’t have any effect at all on colleges liability for alcohol related deaths. Most of the laws that make them liable have nothing to do with the age of the drinker, server responsibility laws are just as applicable when the drinker is 38 as when they’re 18.
What it would do is be a step towards ending our painfully idiotic phased adulthood. It’s just plain stupid that in this country you can vote and fight in a war but not get a freaking beer.
And as for the old goats. If the young girl is over 18 they’re legal, drunk or sober. Maybe it would be a little harder for the old goat since the 18 year old would be able to buy her own drink instead of asking some old goat to buy it for her.
I think on private property, if an adult wants to give an 18 year old a beer, they should be able to do so. Keep the purchase age at 21. Make adults legally responsible for the actions of an 18 year old. But if a dad wants to give his son a beer, that’s fine by me.
I never saw drunk Italians as I know
YOU CAN, in the privacy of your home, give YOUR CHILD, (nobody elses’s) alcohol.
That’s legal everywhere.
A soldier who’s mature enough to make decisions in a combat zone is more than mature enough to drink a beer when he comes home, regardless of his age.
Whatever age is old enough to die for your country is old enough for EVERYTHING. Pick the year you want, but make sure it’s not silly. Do you really think the guys defending your life right now in Iraq shouldn’t get a beer when they get home?
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