Lower the legal drinking age?

[Pangloss]

You hear this from time to time -- that the drinking age should be lowered. Usually it's college students singing the tune. What's unusual this time is that it's coming from college presidents.

 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/19/AR2008081902836.html?hpid=sec-education

 

Scores of college presidents, including the head of Maryland's public university system and the president of Johns Hopkins University, have an unexpected request for legislators: Please, lower the drinking age.

 

The Amethyst Initiative, launched in July, is a coalition of college presidents who say that the legal drinking age of 21 encourages binge drinking on campuses. William Kirwan, chancellor of the University System of Maryland, William Brody, president of Johns Hopkins, C.D. Mote Jr. of the University of Maryland and the presidents of Washington and Lee, Sweet Briar, Towson, Randolph-Macon, Duke, Tufts, Dartmouth and others have signed on to the effort.

 

The rationale is that it will somehow lower the amount of binge drinking that takes place on college campuses. Uh, shouldn't these guys be preventing ANY drinking from taking place on college campuses? Hello!

 

But holy cow, look at some of the names on that list. These are serious schools with real reputations. Is it possible they have a real point?

 

It's going to be a fight, that's for sure. That's assuming congress even bothers to listen. MADD is a very powerful lobby these days, and they're also opposed by the American Medical Association, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, and even the National Transportation Safety Board (shouldn't they be busy finding a downed aircraft or something? odd).

 

And there's a lot of basic logic behind the idea that lowering the drinking age will just cause more drinking. Do they really think college students care what the legal age is, once the beer keg is staring them in the face? (Heck, it'd get the "Obvious" tag on FARK, if it hasn't already.)

 

I think they (the presidents) are nuts, but I guess I'd be willing to learn more about it. What do you all think?

 

Here's a Wikipedia article on the Amethyst Initiative:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amethyst_Initiative

 

And their web site:

http://www.amethystinitiative.org/

[CaptainPanic]

Makes sense to me. But then again, I live in a country where you can buy a beer at the age of 16, and strong alcohol (vodka and stuff) at 18... That means that you actually start drinking before you leave the house (of your parents) and move out to live on your own. It means that if you come home drunk, you're going to have to explain that. It means you learn to drink while being supervised

 

The same goes for many European countries... And Europe is still doing fine I believe. So it cannot be all bad.

[bascule]

America sure has a love/hate relationship with alcohol. It's quite bizarre to go to countries like Japan where you can buy beer out of a vending machine on practically any street corner.

 

That said: there's retarded advocacy groups who think America's problems with alcohol can be solved by raising the drinking age or lowering the BAC at which you're legally considered intoxicated. Both of these are completely stupid moves with no merit.

 

The drinking age should be 18. Period. College age students are going to drink, and they can either do so at their leisure, or binge drink because the opportunity presents itself and they can't do so at their leisure.

 

Also: people are going to drink and hop in their car. Is it really reasonable to pull over someone who's had one or two glasses of wine? Are they really the problem?

 

I've literally witnessed students drinking themselves nearly to death. One of the members of my class in college drank herself to death. This is really, really stupid.

 

Beyond that, I'm morally opposed to the way the present drinking age was establish. The federal government literally blackmailed all of the state governments into raising the drinking age. That sort of shit should be illegal.

[CPL.Luke]

alcohol is available on campus period. alcohol is readily available to people between 18 and 21 period. The ony way to stop the flow of alcohol to campuses is by turning the campus into a police state where everyones bags and dorm rooms are searched regularly for alcohol which in my opinion is just silly and can be summed up in the following statement

 

"drinking is healthier than fascism"

 

the problem is that when the drinking age is 21 people can't go to bars (the most preferable place to drink), where getting smashed is considered bad form and on top of that hideously expensive.

 

If my only access to alcohol is sporadic I buy litres of wiskey instead of 6 packs of beer, you can easily see how this train of logic leads to binge drinking.

[CaptainPanic]

Same is happening in Scandinavia where people make routine visits to Estonia and Germany to buy cheap alcohol. Load up the car and go home to have a massive drinking party.

[Gilded]

Same is happening in Scandinavia where people make routine visits to Estonia and Germany to buy cheap alcohol. Load up the car and go home to have a massive drinking party.

 

Yep. Estonia is very popular in Finland for that purpose. The legal drinking age here is 18, but upwards from 22% alcohol you have to be 20.

[Sisyphus]

What happened when the drinking age was raised to 21? Let's see some statistics about underage (but over 18) drinking-related problems in the United States vs. other countries where it's legal.

 

Just from my own experience, though, I'm inclined to favor lowering the legal age. First of all, alcohol was ridiculously easy to come by at college for an "illegal substance." The law did not prevent drinking. It did, however, force a pretense of secrecy, so people drank only in private. It also encouraged "stocking up" when it was available. Both of these things definitely encouraged binge drinking. Every serious alcohol-related incident that I was aware of happened with underage, inexperienced drinkers, usually freshman experimenting for the first few times among themselves. By the time kids were actually legal they were a lot more moderate and smarter in their drinking, because they learned the hard way while they were underage.

[insane_alien]

i'd be in favour of you guys lowering i. when your underage it is EASY to get booze. i done it her in the UK before i was 18 and i managed just fine in vegas where the legal age is 21 and i'm only 20.

 

openly drinking is much better than having to drink in secret. its safer.

[dethfire]

I'd favor 19. if it's 18 then kids in high school can drink. better to let them drink at the start of college

[Klaynos]

IA the difference between the UK and US is that in the US it's illegal for people under 21 to drink it, here it's illegal for under 18's to be sold it... or under 16's with a plated meal below a certain % I think...

 

Binge drinking is supposed to be a big problem in the UK and occationally France is trumpeted as a success where the drinking culture is different and people from a very young age expect to drink with most meals...

 

I'm interested why you'd want to stop all drinking on college campuses though, under 21's I can understand because it's illegal, but our guild of students makes quite alot of money from it's student bars which it puts into student services... And bars/pubs encourage socially responsible drinking as opposed to getting quietly drunk on your own somewhere...

[iNow]

The 21 age not only doesn't work, it makes matters worse. Forbidden fruits taste the sweetest. It's silly and outdated. One can vote and die for their country, but can't kick back a beer? Give me a break.

[Pangloss]

I think part of the problem is the peer pressure society puts on young adults to drink. There's a soft form of it right here in this thread. The kind of reasoning being touted in many posts above makes more sense if a legal drinking age is eliminated and the responsibility is returned to parents from the beginning. But saying it should be 18 actually puts it in the domain of "things you should start doing when you turn a certain age". You hear that excuse a lot from young people where they talk about being able to vote or be drafted but unable to drink. You can't rent a car either, what do these things have to do with one another?

 

Put another way, you don't have to start getting drunk when you turn a certain age. Getting drunk is not a rite of passage to adulthood. Learning how to drink responsibly is not a requirement for the human condition. Where do people get these stupid ideas? From us? Are we insane?

 

I agree with the suggestion that having a legal drinking age (and having it be 21) contributes to that problem, but here's a thought -- why not solve that problem first (the peer pressure issue), then talk about lowering or eliminating the drinking age?

 

As for enforcement, the talk above about how they can't do anything really irks me -- that is pure bunk. You've got whole industries revolving around selling alcohol to people who can't have it. Go after the sellers, for pete's sake. There's no "police state" about it. Make it hurt to sell alcohol to minors, make it unprofitable, and it'll stop tomorrow.

[CPL.Luke]

pangloss talking about changing a sociology is essentially saying lets do nothing, schools have been spending tremendous amounts of money on getting people to not drink it is utterly ineffective.

 

the laws governing the sale of alcohol to minors are very well enforced around most college campuses. For instance around my school it is impossible for anyone under 21 to enter a liquor store. And the police regularly stake out the liquor stores in order to catch people buying large quantities of booze so that they can follow where the alcohol is going.

 

However this is not the problem, the problem is that I can and do easily get alcohol when any of my friends who are over 21 go out to get some, I ask them to grab me some and they do. there is no way of stopping this as a person over 21 entering a liquor store and purchasing two handles of vodka is not probable cause for anything. And a handle of hard liquor is easily concealable in any bag, thus preventing the police from ever catching me aquiring this alcohol without violating my civil rights.

 

Similarly a College cannot perform a search inside the dorm rooms without a warrant as I am leasing the dorm from the school and everything inside of it is considered my private space. The only exception to this would be when someone calls in and says that there is a party going on, schools spend considerable amounts of money preventing such parties from occuring, but it happens and there is nothing the school can do to stop it without violating peoples rights.

 

Personally I drank at home in moderation since I was 13 and never pursued binge drinking until college as it was silly and pointless.

 

As a side note I've been to several parties at NYU where drinking laws are almost unenforced, and the most booze I ever saw at such a party was 4 six packs for 6 people, and rarely did I encounter hard alcohol at such events. contrast that to my school Umass where for a party with a dozen people there is likely to be between 6 and 12 litres of hard alcohol, combined with whatever beer or such things show up.

 

granted this is not a sizeable sample of parties, however from what I've heard from students at NYU there is extremely little binge drinking, in large part because the night normally consists of trying to get served (and succeeding) at various bars and clubs. This accomplishes the change in sociology that you were reffering to before, and it is accomplished without spending any money at all.

 

 

its good that people are finally interested in fixing this as its been an issue that people care about when they are under 21 but afterwards people stop caring meanwhile this law has been having negative consequences on our higher education system, and I would question the justice in any law that declares the vast majority of people as violators of the law (I'd estimate that the percentage of people who have not violated the law at somewhere around the percentage of people who never consume alcohol).

Edited August 20, 2008 by CPL.Luke

[Pangloss]

pangloss talking about changing a sociology is essentially saying lets do nothing, schools have been spending tremendous amounts of money on getting people to not drink it is utterly ineffective.

 

Why would you say that it's ineffective when obviously most adults drink responsibly, if they drink at all? I think that's a popular meme, people say "it's ineffective" when what they really mean is "lots of kids are drinking, so it must not be working at all".

 

This is a contradiction:

 

the laws governing the sale of alcohol to minors are very well enforced around most college campuses. For instance around my school it is impossible for anyone under 21 to enter a liquor store. And the police regularly stake out the liquor stores in order to catch people buying large quantities of booze so that they can follow where the alcohol is going.

 

However this is not the problem, the problem is that I can and do easily get alcohol when any of my friends who are over 21 go out to get some, I ask them to grab me some and they do. there is no way of stopping this as a person over 21 entering a liquor store and purchasing two handles of vodka is not probable cause for anything. And a handle of hard liquor is easily concealable in any bag, thus preventing the police from ever catching me aquiring this alcohol without violating my civil rights.

 

It's an absolute contradiction to say that the laws are being enforced when you have easy, ready access below the drinking age. Clearly someone is breaking the law. That happens because we tolerate that behavior and do nothing to enforce the standard. We see it as trivial, a minor problem, something unworthy of actual attention. Kids just being kids.

 

 

 

Similarly a College cannot perform a search inside the dorm rooms without a warrant as I am leasing the dorm from the school and everything inside of it is considered my private space. The only exception to this would be when someone calls in and says that there is a party going on, schools spend considerable amounts of money preventing such parties from occuring, but it happens and there is nothing the school can do to stop it without violating peoples rights.

 

This is, I'm afraid, another contradiction. You just said that they can't perform a search without a warrant, and then gave an exception that happens to be the one time one would envision enforcement would take place. So clearly there's something they can do about it without violating anybody's rights -- you just said when that can happen.

 

 

Personally I drank at home in moderation since I was 13 and never pursued binge drinking until college as it was silly and pointless.

 

Right, because you were exposed to it early. I actually agree with that reasoning, it's just not what we're discussing here.

 

 

As a side note I've been to several parties at NYU where drinking laws are almost unenforced, and the most booze I ever saw at such a party was 4 six packs for 6 people, and rarely did I encounter hard alcohol at such events. contrast that to my school Umass where for a party with a dozen people there is likely to be between 6 and 12 litres of hard alcohol, combined with whatever beer or such things show up.

 

Your point, apparently, being that enforcement is more successful at NYU than at UMass. Um, okay.

 

 

granted this is not a sizeable sample of parties, however from what I've heard from students at NYU there is extremely little binge drinking, in large part because the night normally consists of trying to get served (and succeeding) at various bars and clubs. This accomplishes the change in sociology that you were reffering to before, and it is accomplished without spending any money at all.

 

Sounds great!

[iNow]

What exactly is the benefit for having the legal age at 21 supposed to be? I've only read studies showing a legal age of 21 making matters worse. Where are the studies showing it helps?

 

Fact: The university presidents have real world, first hand experience with the issues of and damages from binge drinking.

Fact: They are seeking a way to help their students be healthier and more focussed on school.

Fact: The existing legal age is not a limit at all, and creates a need to hide, and for secrecy, and also the coolness factor of forbidden fruits.

Fact: One of the reasons people binge is because they cannot access it whenever they want, so they are trying to maximize the return when alcohol is available.

 

 

What's the benefit of fighting for an age of 21 again? It sounds to me like religiots trying to push their morals on to the rest of us via the legal system.

[Pangloss]

Or maybe it's university presidents tired of spending money solving a problem they didn't create in the first place and shouldn't be part of their educational mandate either. I completely agree with your points, I just think it's a mistake to lower the drinking age to 18. Under your own definition of the problem, how does that action (lowering it to 18) solve the problem? Wouldn't it make more sense to have no drinking age limit at all?

 

And if you're not going to do that, what is the outcome of lowering it to 18?

[iNow]

Because the maturity levels at 12 and the maturity levels at 16 and the maturity levels at 18 are all very different. However, the difference in maturity between 18 and 21 is miniscule.

 

I don't really care about the age thing, myself. When I have kids, I'll let my 12 year old swig off the beer if he wants. At least he'll be doing so under my supervision and guidance.

[Pangloss]

That's an excellent point about maturity levels, but remember, under the current system, these binge-drinkers have little or no prior experience with alcohol when they arrive at the frat houses for freshman rush. What do you think is going to be the result if we immediately legalize drinking at rush, without any further actions to prepare them for that environment?

 

I don't really care about the age thing, myself. When I have kids, I'll let my 12 year old swig off the beer if he wants. At least he'll be doing so under my supervision and guidance.

 

Right, exactly, with supervision and guidance. And the great thing about that is if we had that situation, if most kids were learning about alcohol in that manner, then even those who arrived at college without the benefit of that experience would be exposed to it second-hand by all their peers, who DID learn about it that way. (Telling them to stop being a fool, instead of egging them on.)

 

The more I think about it, the more I agree that no legal drinking age would be better. Unfortunately that's not what's being proposed here, and I suspect that lowering the age from 21 to 18 will, in the current environment, actually cause more harm and solve nothing except to wash the hands of college presidents clean.

[CPL.Luke]

Similarly a College cannot perform a search inside the dorm rooms without a warrant as I am leasing the dorm from the school and everything inside of it is considered my private space. The only exception to this would be when someone calls in and says that there is a party going on, schools spend considerable amounts of money preventing such parties from occuring, but it happens and there is nothing the school can do to stop it without violating peoples rights.

This is, I'm afraid, another contradiction. You just said that they can't perform a search without a warrant, and then gave an exception that happens to be the one time one would envision enforcement would take place. So clearly there's something they can do about it without violating anybody's rights -- you just said when that can happen.

 

however in this cased it qualifies as probable cause, and the whole process is slightly more complicated than I may have led you to believe, however the main point is that some form of probable cause is there when a party is going on (there are a large number of appeals at the school related to whether cause was present).

 

 

As a side note I've been to several parties at NYU where drinking laws are almost unenforced, and the most booze I ever saw at such a party was 4 six packs for 6 people, and rarely did I encounter hard alcohol at such events. contrast that to my school Umass where for a party with a dozen people there is likely to be between 6 and 12 litres of hard alcohol, combined with whatever beer or such things show up.

 

Your point, apparently, being that enforcement is more successful at NYU than at UMass. Um, okay.

 

no the point was that alcohol is readily available at NYU as anybody can purchase alcohol in a bar or a liquor store, and yet there is less drinking than at a school where no one under the age of 21 is capable of directly purchasing alcohol from and licensed store due to strict enforcement.

 

 

 

the laws governing the sale of alcohol to minors are very well enforced around most college campuses. For instance around my school it is impossible for anyone under 21 to enter a liquor store. And the police regularly stake out the liquor stores in order to catch people buying large quantities of booze so that they can follow where the alcohol is going.

 

However this is not the problem, the problem is that I can and do easily get alcohol when any of my friends who are over 21 go out to get some, I ask them to grab me some and they do. there is no way of stopping this as a person over 21 entering a liquor store and purchasing two handles of vodka is not probable cause for anything. And a handle of hard liquor is easily concealable in any bag, thus preventing the police from ever catching me aquiring this alcohol without violating my civil rights.

 

It's an absolute contradiction to say that the laws are being enforced when you have easy, ready access below the drinking age. Clearly someone is breaking the law. That happens because we tolerate that behavior and do nothing to enforce the standard. We see it as trivial, a minor problem, something unworthy of actual attention. Kids just being kids.

 

the law is broken when the 21 year old gives me the alcohol. However it is impossible to stop this type of distribution, as the alcohol has left the store and any ability to monitor it, once it enters a bag and passes into a private citizens hands there is no way to determine where the bottle came from or is going to (without spending considerable amounts of money), it is equivalent to the government passing a law that said that red lingerie was obscene and that no one under the age of 21 is to be allowed to where it. AS the police aren't allowed to search someone to see if their wearing it the law is virtually unenforceable except for requiring id's at victoria's secret, and fining people who sell it to people under 21, but we can quickly imagine how a number of people will disagree with the justice of the law and continue to provide, thus making the whole venture pointless.

 

As for adults drinking responsibly its interesting to note that most adults today have drank while being underage, most people over 21 seem to drink responsibly however it appears that they are irresponsible between 18 and 21, there seems to be a demarkation line here which suggests that people who are legally adults are more responsible when treated as adults.

 

 

EDIT: a number of states already have laws that allow parents to provide alcohol to their children, last I heard there were 3 of them and I think one of them was New jersey

[john5746]

What exactly is the benefit for having the legal age at 21 supposed to be? I've only read studies showing a legal age of 21 making matters worse. Where are the studies showing it helps?

 

Here are some:

 

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/07/080701083542.htm

 

http://www.cspinet.org/booze/mlpafact.htm

 

 

 

 

Fact: The university presidents have real world, first hand experience with the issues of and damages from binge drinking.

Fact: They are seeking a way to help their students be healthier and more focussed on school.

.

 

They have a narrow focus on their university - MADD has real world experience with kids getting killed on roads everywhere.

 

Fact: The existing legal age is not a limit at all, and creates a need to hide, and for secrecy, and also the coolness factor of forbidden fruits.

Fact: One of the reasons people binge is because they cannot access it whenever they want, so they are trying to maximize the return when alcohol is available.

.

 

They are going to cheat as well - throw that rule out? How about throwing them out of university for at least a semester if they are caught drinking, drunk, etc? You think some possible punishment might limit the problem a little?

[Phi for All]

I don't agree that the difference between 18 and 21 is minuscule. In fact, age has relatively little to do with maturity when it comes to substance abuse. I agree with Pangloss that if you want to curb illegal drinking, you go to the source and make it financially unfeasible to sell it to those who aren't supposed to have it. But that still leaves the problem of how old is not old enough.

 

I think the responsible thing for these university presidents to do is to provide places on campus where an 18 year old can go to get liquor at the prices charged by liquor stores, but supervised the way a bar would be to encourage responsible drinking. Alcohol doesn't leave the premise and if you abuse the atmosphere of the campus "lounge" you lose the privilege temporarily, or permanently with repeated abuse.

 

Nothing is going to be 100% effective but this seems like a good compromise. And it alleviates the problem for the university without creating a problem for the non-students in the affected state.

[CPL.Luke]

^they are already kicking people out of housing and fining them $100 for alcohol related incidents at my school, it has had no effect.

 

I'd personally atribute the change in alcohol related deaths to successful anti-drunk driving policies over the drinking limit. (consider that germany has no drinking age and they have a lower accident rate than we do)

 

phi for all current laws prevent them from pursuing such a policy.

[Sisyphus]

However, the difference in maturity between 18 and 21 is miniscule.

 

I'm going to have to disagree with you on that. It seems to me that most people change a great deal in those three years.

[Phi for All]

I'd personally atribute the change in alcohol related deaths to successful anti-drunk driving policies over the drinking limit. (consider that germany has no drinking age and they have a lower accident rate than we do)

That is, in part, due to the fact that you automatically lose your driver's license if caught drink driving in Germany, and it costs approximately US$1400 and retesting to get it back.

 

phi for all current laws prevent them from pursuing such a policy.

I should have said that the university presidents should be pushing for a law allowing on-campus lounges where 18 year olds can drink, rather than trying to get the states to pass a law that affects all 18 year olds.

[waitforufo]

If the age is lowered, I hope it is done nationally. Idaho once had a drinking age of 19 while Washington had a drinking age of 21. This lead to a lot of DUI's issued, and drunk driving accidents on I-90 between Coeur d'Alene ID. and Spokane WA. Currently the driving age is only held to 21 nationally because federal highway funds will be withheld from states that have drinking ages below 21.