Let’s be honest, at my age, the drinking age isn’t anything I really care about.  I think I have been carded once in the last 10 or 15 years.

But i do have children, two of which are still under the age of 21, so for their sake, and for the unnamed hoard of 18-20 year olds, I want to visit the issue.

What brings this into focus is the recent call to raise the drinking age back up, presented by a coalition of college professors.¹

College chiefs urge new debate on drinking age

College presidents from about 100 of the nation’s best-known universities, including Duke, Dartmouth and Ohio State, are calling on lawmakers to consider lowering the drinking age from 21 to 18, saying current laws actually encourage dangerous binge drinking on campus.

Men pour beer on a drunken student during Spring Break on South Padre Island, Texas.

The movement called the Amethyst Initiative began quietly recruiting presidents more than a year ago to provoke national debate about the drinking age.

“This is a law that is routinely evaded,” said John McCardell, former president of Middlebury College in Vermont who started the organization. “It is a law that the people at whom it is directed believe is unjust and unfair and discriminatory.”

Other prominent schools in the group include Syracuse, Tufts, Colgate, Kenyon and Morehouse.

Of course the debate has its opponants.

Mothers Against Drunk Driving says lowering the drinking age would lead to more fatal car crashes. It accuses the presidents of misrepresenting science and looking for an easy way out of an inconvenient problem.

Now, I can understand their wanting to be a part of the deate and that they are passionate.  What sucks is that MADD had to take the low road:

MADD officials are even urging parents to think carefully about the safety of colleges whose presidents have signed on.