Presidents debate drinking age limits
Ask students about changing the minimum age to drink alcohol and the answers will echo the creators and supporters of a recent petition among college presidents to reopen debate on the 21-to-drink law.
Some argue that at 18, people can fight and die for their country while in the military, they can vote, drive and smoke cigarettes. A 21-year-old limit creates a “forbidden fruit” mentality and an allure to alcohol. For those that fall to the temptation, the law also turns otherwise lawful young people into lawbreakers.
The goal of the petition is to reopen debate on the minimum drinking age and does not advocate lowering or raising it, said John McCardell, president of Choose Responsibility, the organization behind the petition.
Since July, 129 college presidents, representing places like Notre Dame and Dartmouth, have signed the petition, dubbed the Amethyst Initiative. McCardell said the
petition just shows they think that 21 isn’t in step with public perception of drinking.
Some students agree with the premise while others think any change is too much to pull off.
“I think (the 21-law) just makes people hypocrites,” said Shammah Chancellor, a 23-year-old physics major. “I mean how many people never have a drink between 18 and 21? How many people need to be breaking a law before it really isn’t a law anymore?”
Drinking can cause problems, especially for students who are not mature enough to handle its consequences, said Calie Altieri, a 22-year-old journalism major. But, at 18, people get a number of other rights – why not the ability to legally drink?
“Everyone always uses this as such an excuse, but in Europe, the drinking age is lowered,” she said. But if it is lowered in America, “I don’t want to say ‘a bout of pandemonium,’ but it would go kind of crazy.”
McCardell said national interest in the debate, and people on both sides of the debate to change the age, shows a larger discussion is needed.
“It has been unbelievable,” McCardell said. “If you Google it you’re going to get more than 2,000 citations in the past 10 days and that’s just extraordinary. The interest in this question demonstrates that the public is interested in it and on both sides of it.”
The organization’s road block at the moment is the National Minimum Drinking Age Act of 1984. Under this law, Congress levies 10 percent of federal highway funds from any state with a minimum age for alcohol other than 21.
This provision alone draws the ire of some people. Chancellor said it’s the federal government overstepping its bounds.
The federal highway aid bill, which allows for the levy, will go before Congress again in 2009, setting the stage for the petition against what McCardell called an “impediment to debate.”
Another roadblock appears, however, in garnering that sort of political support, said Eric Herzik, a University of Nevada, Reno political science professor.
“No legislature is going to take this up as an issue because there’s no strong constituency that could drive it and there are too many constituencies that would,” he said. “I just think this goes no where.”
Even the support of ten-dozen college president’s doesn’t force the matter, Herzik said. For every president like McCardell, there’s one like UNR president Milton Glick, he said.
Glick said that while open dialogue is healthy for any educational institution, he will not be signing the petition.
“I think it is strange that of all the issues facing colleges these days, the president’s would choose this one,” Glick said.
He pointed out problems with graduation rates and the budget at UNR, both time-consuming and more pressing than the drinking age, he said. Problems with binge drinking also plague universities and fighting that is the only stance Glick said he would take on the alcohol issue.
“I don’t understand it,” Glick said. “Maybe I’m too old. Having a social drink, I can understand that. But binge drinking is very different.”
Markus Kemmelmeier, a UNR sociology professor, said arguments for and against changing the drinking age tend to muddle the facts.
But ultimately, he agrees with Herzik’s conclusion that it won’t go anywhere.
There’s not enough people who will benefit from the change and for the most part the public has learned to live with 21 as the limit, he said. And raising the drinking age would create to great a sense of loss among the public to go anywhere, he said.
Initiative
- The minimum drinking age of 21 is out-of-step with the general public.
- People gain a slew of rights and responsibilities at 18, including military responsibility and the right to vote, but cannot drink.
- The number of minors who drink creates unnecessary lawbreakers.
Agaisnt
- There are more important issues to debate.
- 21 is working and it would create turmoil to change.
- A lowered drinking age would increase young drunk drivers.
- More people would binge drink with a lowered drinking age.
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September 3rd, 2008 at 11:41 am
If we can risk our lives at 18, have sex, purchase tabacco, & vote, why should be not be able to have a drink?
The main reason colleges and adults see binge drinking with adults under 21 is because when they can get ahold of alcohol at a party, they have as much as they can, because they know they can’t get it otherwise. Once a person is 21 you don’t see that because it’s not a big deal when you can have it whenever you want.
Like the saying
“You want what you can’t have”
If it is made avaliable to 18 year olds, binge drinking & the amount of collage deaths related to drinking would go down.
September 10th, 2008 at 9:56 pm
Christina - I agree wholeheartedly.
Now, as to the article itself - the arguments in the “against” column seem to have been made by a hungover 16-year-old on a deadline.
“A lowered drinking age would increase young drunk drivers.” Really? At the risk of sounding cliche - what about Europe? Back where I’m from, young adults are treated as adults, and drinking is part of the culture. If introduced at an early age and moderated by the elders, it’s just another part of life - like soda or driving.
“More people would binge drink with a lowered drinking age.” At first, maybe. The initial period will require a certain degree of oversight. Then, as the novelty of drinking goes away, things will get back to normal. Prior to the passage of the the National Minimum Drinking Age Act of 1984, states had lower drinking ages, such as 18. That means your parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents were all able to drink on their 18th birthday. If alcohol were as evil as MADD portrays it, we wouldn’t be here! So either the MADD is lying, or our generation is much more irresponsible and retarded than any other generation in history. I think it’s the former and not the latter.
And just a bit of history: in a way, MADD brought about the organized crime. The Women’s Temperance Union lobbied so heavily for prohibition that the 18th Amendment was passed, and for 13 miserable years the black market was the primary source of booze. That led to the rise of mafia, organized criminal networks and, one can argue, the Kennedy clan. I’m sure the temperance Union women had all the best intentions, but we all know where that road usually leads…