Quicker Liquor

QUICKER LIQUOR
Should we lower the legal drinking age?
By Darshak Sanghavi
Posted Tuesday, Aug. 26, 2008, at 6:58 AM ET

Last week, a coalition of presidents from more than 100 colleges and universities called on authorities to consider lowering the legal drinking age. The so-called Amethyst Initiative, founded by a fed-up former president of Middlebury College, asserts that "twenty-one is not working" because the current drinking age has led to a "culture of dangerous, clandestine binge-drinking" on college campuses. "How many times," they rhetorically ask, "must we relearn the lessons of prohibition?"

These academic heavyweights—who include the presidents of institutions like Duke, Spelman, Tufts, and Johns Hopkins—believe that lowering the legal drinking age can promote more responsible alcohol use. The familiar argument is that singling out alcohol to make it off-limits is odd, since 18-year-olds may legally join the military, vote, buy cigarettes, and watch porn.

Meanwhile over the past decades, binge-drinking has soared among young people. The 1984 federal law that helps determine the legal drinking age is up for renewal next year, and the college presidents believe this law "stifles meaningful debate" and discourages "new ideas" to stop binge-drinking, like allowing kids over 18 to buy alcohol after a course on its "history, culture, law, chemistry, biology, neuroscience as well as exposure to accident victims and individuals in recovery."

It's a nice to think that simply lowering the drinking age would make college students behave better (as well as cheer loudly). But the Amethyst Initiative—named for the gemstone believed by ancient Greeks to stave off drunkenness—has naively exaggerated the benefits of a lower legal drinking age. They ignore some of the implications of their recommendations, fail to acknowledge their own complicity in the campus drinking problem, and ultimately gloss over better solutions to bingeing. Kind of like addicts might.

In truth, the higher drinking age saves lives and has little relation to college bingeing. Some history: After her daughter was killed by an intoxicated driver, Candy Lightner founded Mothers Against Drunk Driving and successfully lobbied for the 1984 National Minimum Drinking Age Act (the law that's up for reauthorization in 2009), which gave full federal highway funds only to states that set the minimum age to purchase or consu me alcohol at 21 years. Most states immediately complied, setting the stage for a national experiment.

According to the federal study Monitoring the Future, underage drinking dropped instantly. From 1977 to 2007, the percentage of 12th graders drinking at least monthly fell from 70 percent to 45 percent—almost immediately after the law was enacted, and lastingly. Fatal car crashes involving drunk young adults dipped 32 percent, resulting in 1,000 fewer lives lost per year. Impressively, this decrease occurred despite minimal efforts at enforcement; the mere presence of the law was protective. The relationship is likely causal. In 1999, by comparison, New Zealand lowered the drinking age from 20 to 18, and fatal crashes soared.* Today, all major public health authorities, including the American Medical Association, Centers for Disease Control, National Highway Traffic Safety Board, and surgeon general, support the higher drinking age.

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