When anyone in America reaches the age of 18, they are legally considered an adult. They are officially responsible enough to open a business, get married, smoke cigarettes, vote and go to war. Yet until they turn 21, they are apparently still not mature enough to have a drink at a restaurant with friends or even a glass of champagne at their own wedding.
Nearly one out of every six soldiers who die in Iraq or Afghanistan is considered too irresponsible handle a drink of alcohol. Not only is this just bad public policy, it is insulting to young adults everywhere in America. It is time to finally lower the drinking age.
The law is not just bad because of the obvious hypocrisy but also because of its unintended consequences. Instead of learning to drink responsibly in college, those younger than 21 become accustomed to doing seven shots of vodka in a dorm room before they are able to have a glass of wine at a restaurant. Whether you have watched a friend spend the night hugging a toilet seat, or if you don’t even give the usual parade of EMeRG vehicles outside Thurston Hall a second glance anymore, we can all agree that the current system is not working.
A 2003 Institute of Medicine Study showed that 96 percent of underage drinking occurs with the drinker having five or more drinks at a time. According to one study, nearly one out of every three college students met the diagnoses for alcohol abuse.
After seeing what irresponsible drinking did to his own campus, one college president took action. John McCardell, currently president emeritus of Middlebury College, one of the top liberal arts schools in the nation, started the nonprofit organization Choose Responsibility. His organization is a leading proponent of lowering the drinking age, while at the same time promoting responsible drinking habits.
“Alcohol education ranges from poor to nonexistent,” said McCardell in a recent telephone interview. “It is the missing piece. If you were driving a car, you would never hand someone the keys and say good luck. That is how we deal with alcohol.”
MADD, the leading proponent for keeping the legal drinking age at 21, believes that the current legal drinking age has saved lives. According to their marketing campaign, since the law was enacted in the early 1980s, alcohol-related traffic deaths have been cut in half.
There are several problems with this assertion. First, changes in car safety requirements such as air bags and seat belts have made cars exponentially safer than they were more than 20 years ago. Also, when the law was enacted, only 14 percent of drivers wore seat belts. In 2004, that percentage stood at 80 percent.
If traffic accidents are actually behind MADD’s rationale for having a higher drinking age than most anywhere else in the world, then they should be pushing for a drinking age of 35, or even 50. According to the National Institutes of Health, alcohol is involved in 40 percent of accidents of people who are actually over the age of 21. Shouldn’t we be educating responsible drinking habits to all ages so that when people actually do hit the legal age they can act sensibly?
According to the MADD Web site, “teaching teens to drink responsibly is not an option for there is no ‘responsible’ teen drinking.”
Are they talking about the same teens that have the responsibility to fight and die in Iraq and Afghanistan? The same teens who are allowed to choose the next president of the United States?
It is time that we lower the drinking age to 18, but with several considerations. We should have a national education course, where those who turn 18 would need to obtain a “provisional alcohol license.” The standardization of such a system across the U.S. would not only help educate about responsible drinking habits, but it would also reduce use of fake identification that is prevalent among underage drinkers. Nobody would be able to obtain the alcohol license if they could be identified as an at-risk driver. For example, someone with two speeding tickets would be ineligible for the program. Also, the provisional alcohol license could be revoked for criminal behavior or a poor driving record.
In conjunction with the license, we should increase penalties for drunk drivers and those who do drink irresponsibly. For example, instead of only a one-year license suspension, there should be a three-year suspension for convicted offenders.
The debate surrounding the drinking age must be reframed to open up a dialogue that talks about responsibility and education before punishment and prohibition.
The writer is a junior majoring in political communication.
