Last evening, A1A and I had a little email chat about the link he’d sent me on something called the Amethyst Initiative — a group calling on Congress to consider lowering the legal drinking age from 21 to 18. They say:
[O]ur experience as college and university presidents convinces us that…
Twenty-one is not working
A culture of dangerous, clandestine "binge-drinking"–often conducted off-campus–has developed.
Alcohol education that mandates abstinence as the only legal option has not resulted in significant constructive behavioral change among our students.
Adults under 21 are deemed capable of voting, signing contracts, serving on juries and enlisting in the military, but are told they are not mature enough to have a beer.
By choosing to use fake IDs, students make ethical compromises that erode respect for the law.
How many times must we relearn the lessons of prohibition?
We call upon our elected officials:
To support an informed and dispassionate public debate over the effects of the 21 year-old drinking age.
To consider whether the 10% highway fund "incentive" encourages or inhibits that debate.
To invite new ideas about the best ways to prepare young adults to make responsible decisions about alcohol.
We pledge ourselves and our institutions to playing a vigorous, constructive role as these critical discussions unfold.
This morning’s C-L details Millsaps president Frances Lucas’s support for the initiative (note the far-right tap in the photo above hers — who knew?).
As I told A1A, my immediate inclination was to agree with their stance, though I wanted to think a bit more. Now that I have, I still go with my first impression. What held me up a little was wondering whether legal-at-18 might exacerbate the DUI problem among teeners and college kids. But the more I think about it, the more I doubt that.
As I told A1A, the first thing that came to my mind was the foreign students I knew in high school and college. As I recall, not a one of them (mostly Europeans) was the least interested in binge drinking or any other marker of the “forbidden-fruit syndrome.” Beer, wine, and booze being no big whups in their lives, they marveled at the frat-rat types who lived to get sloppy.
So I say, “You go, Amethysts.” Nothing wrong here that a little cultural maturation won’t cure.
The problem drinkers will drink underage in any case, legal or not. Why penalize the kid wanting an occasional beer, or a glass of wine with dinner, like, oh, say, WE do?
We can send them to war to die for their country at 18; a beer or two doesn’t seem such a huge deal. I also put a great deal of trust in the academic world to have a pretty good handle on this issue.
Drinking was never prohibited in my parent’s home. I do think that killed much of the curiosity about it and neutralized some of the impulse to try it outside our home. Didn’t really care for it and didn’t drink til much later. Don’t know what you do about kids who are predisposed to alcohol addiction, but I don’t think outright prohibition is the answer to that issue.
Duckweed at 3,
They’ll get it anyway. Alcoholism is an insidious disease that prohibition will not cure or stymy.
A1A, I agree. The AA problem must be handled at home. In lurking around online I seem to find conflicting stats on highway accidents/deaths involving 21 yrs and under and alcohol. That was the issue Reagan used to up the drinking age limit in ‘84.
As you may know, we have 18 as the legal limit to drink in public houses and bars in England, although one can consume alcohol in a restaurant at 14 with one’s parents’ consent.
We have a large number of young teen drinkers (typically in the park with Kwik-E-Mart rotgut cider and “alcopops”) and increasingly aggressive late night scenarios with notable increases in violence and drunkeness in young women. In our small rural town centre one of my daughters was recently beaten to the ground by a drink crazed girl whilst walking home . (A repeat offender, she got community service. A couple of months earlier, a local man died after being attacked by two teenagers who had been drinking all day. They got 3 years.)
I’ve always enjoyed alcohol and getting a bit pissed, but now there seems to be so much aggressive behaviour that I rarely go for a late pub drink.
Just getting old, maybe.
Whatever age limit you choose, it will always be seen as a challenge to those below it.
Good point, Rodney. You know, I can’t get over the wild-in-the-streets stories of British teeners these last few years — has this been coming on for a while, and I’ve only just noticed, or is it really as recent a development as it seems? What do you make of it — what’s behind it?
(Hope your daughter healed well and quickly, by the way.)
Thanks for your good wishes to Tiffany, my daughter, Lotus; she’s physically over it but withdrew her teaching application at the local school because of fear of the girl’s relatives.
As for the big picture, who knows? Drink has always been a means to an end for a lot of people and societies imho, a context which allows the revelation and release of emotions suppressed or assimilated in daily sober behaviour. For some this is laughing and dancing into the night on champagne, for others it’s a deliberately attained psychotic state in which they will set fire to a tramp.
Is it “In Vino Veritas” or “the drink talking”?
Whichever, children of an age at which they used to be victims of others’ alcohol abuse are now becoming the abusers.
Rodney, how awful — both the personal and the societal stories you tell.
But I hope Tiffany can make her full comeback before long, and that this incident’s aftereffects include somehow leading her to an even better job opportunity.
As for the “lager-louts” I keep reading about in England (also visiting Spain, Greece, etc.), all I know to call the phenomenon is “a roaring shame.” It seems a mark of despair, and I don’t understand why and how that took root in Britain of the Blair years.
Over at MSCrimDefLawBlog, Kevin Frye makes this interesting observation re the Amethyst Initiative: