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.

“It’s very clear the 21-year-old drinking age will not be enforced at those campuses,” said Laura Dean-Mooney, national president of MADD.

Ignoring MADD’s demagoguary, I think this yet again another case where the real issues are being lost in the debate.

The first real isssue here is the states’ right to set their own laws.

The drinking ages were essentially up to the states until 1984 when the federal government passed a law that required the states to set their drinking age to 21, or risk losing their highway funds.

This is the same bullshit tactic that the feds used to pass the 55 mph speed limit, mandatory seat belt laws, mandatory motorcycle helmet laws and even the .08 alcohol limit for DUI’s.

The fact is that these laws are the most basic form of blackmail, and infringment of the state’s rights to self legislate.

The other real issue is when do we make our adults responsible adults?

At the ripe age of 18, our children can marry, vote, buy guns, sign contracts, get bonded, by real estate and all manner of normal adult activities, perhaps the most important of which the right to serve in our Armed Forces and die for our country.

The opponants claim that 18 year olds are not mature enough, but you cannot have it both ways.   If we set the age of adult in our country as 18, we should actually expect our children to be adults.

Maybe part of the problem is our expectations.  I personally think we send a lot of mixed messages.  We build them up throughout high school by impressing on them their maturity and impending independence and then when we turn them loose on society, we impose restrictions.

I think a big part of the problem is our nanny State culture, that doesn’t allow adults of any age to actually think for themselves.

I think another element is that we have a culture that emphasizes avoidance of responsibility, and downplays something as simple as consequences of actions.

We also have a media culture that promotes and glorifies behavior we in turn preach as unacceptable.

Maybe, just maybe, the law is right.  That kids 18 years old are not mature enough to drink responsibly, not that older adults are shining beacons of lawfullness.

If so, the blame is on the parents and on society in general for not bothering to raise our children enabled to be adults.

But back to the law.  The present drinking age is virtually ignored by the people it most affects, the adults 18-20 years old,  Colleges are raising the issue because despite the bans the drinking continues.

So in the end, what is the point.

Wouldn’t we be more effectively dealing with the problem by doing a better job of raising responsible adults? 

Either way, the laws as they stand are wrong, even if for the wrong reasons.  The matter needs discussion, not just in congress, but everywhere.

Turn the matter back to the states, let the states make their own determination.  And stop the Federal blackmail. 

And let’s take a look at how we raise our kids in the first place.  The drinking age won’t make a difference if we teach them to be responsible.

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1. http://www.cnn.com/2008/HEALTH/08/18/college.drinking.age.ap/index.html [back]

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