Binge Drinking: Purge the Drinking Age
Colleges and college students get blamed for binge drinking fatalities, but maybe we should blame the high drinking age.
By Kathleen Reeves
July 9, 2009
(istockphoto.com)When a recent study found that binge drinking is increasing among college students, the New York Times called upon colleges to “look at their own policies” before blaming the drinking age. The study also claims that since the drinking age was raised to 21, binge drinking has declined among 18- to 20-year-olds who are not in college. The study, and the way it’s been interpreted, taps into a long-running but under-discussed debate about whether or not the drinking age, or “legal 21,” is reasonable.
Colleges have been responding to high rates of binge drinking on campus by cracking down, or reaching out, or some combination of the two. Meanwhile, binge drinking-related fatalities continue to rise. A study released last week by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism reported 1,825 alcohol-related deaths among 18- to 24-year-old college students in 2005, compared with 1,440 in 1998.
Some people are taking issue with the study. The numbers were found by a curiously circuitous route: the estimated percentage of alcohol-related deaths in the age group was multiplied by the total population of the age group, then multiplied by thirty percent, since thirty percent of 18- to 24-year-olds are in college. (Since hospitals don’t make a note of whether or not a patient is in college, perhaps there was no better way.)
James Turner, dean of the department of student health at the University of Virginia, argues that you can’t apply a fatality rate found in one population to any other population and expect accurate results. Turner, also the executive director of the National Social Norms Institute, is more optimistic about college drinking trends. He points to a 2008 University of Virginia study which found that using social marketing is effective in reducing binge drinking. Researchers found a decline in certain “alcohol-related consequences,” like injury, drunk driving, and unprotected sex while under the influence.
The author of the NIAAA study, Ralph Hingson, argues that the study’s figures were probably conservative, if anything. But he doesn’t support lowering the drinking age, maintaining that binge drinking among under-21s went down when the higher legal drinking age went into effect.
Hingson’s study found “heavy episodic drinking” to be more frequent among 21- to 24-year-olds than among 18- to 20-year-olds. But the fact that legal drinkers may drink on more occasions than illegal drinkers does not necessarily mean that the legals are drinking in a more dangerous way than the illegals. In fact, those under 21 may drink more alcohol on a single occasion—or in fewer hours—than those over 21 because they have to do so without trying to get caught. The clandestine nature of illegal drinking makes it more concentrated, more severe, and more deadly, as proponents of a lower drinking age have pointed out.
Another study, from Washington University in St. Louis, clarifies the question a bit. It found that binge drinking among teenagers and young adults has declined overall since the legal drinking age went into effect, but that binge drinking has increased among college students. The study’s results are also broken down by gender. The study found that binge drinking among college women has gone way up, while it’s remained about the same among college men.
These studies support what people on both sides of the drinking age debate recognize: that binge drinking is a part of college culture. The question is whether the law affects drinking habits—or rather, how.
The author of the Washington University study, Richard A. Grucza, argues that the higher drinking age has reduced binge drinking and related fatalities. Proponents for lowering the drinking age, like John McCardell of the Amethyst Initiative, have argued that the higher drinking age has made college students under 21 less safe because they drink in more extreme and more secretive ways.
The Washington University in St. Louis report claims:
Since the minimum national drinking age of 21 was signed into law in 1984, it has become more difficult for younger teenagers to get alcohol and apparently has contributed to lower binge drinking rates among those under 18.
[Grucza] says stable rates of binge drinking among college students and increases in binge drinking among women have offset some of that improvement and developing a better understanding of the reasons for those demographic trends, rather than lowering the drinking age, will assist future efforts to prevent binge drinking.
It’s true that an understanding of communities enriches any public health effort. But any inquiry into the lives and beliefs of 18- to 20-year-old college students will find that these students want to drink will find a way to drink. The legal drinking age is so easy to circumvent on college campuses that it has ceased to be (and probably never has been) a deterrent.
Both studies—and the New York Times—argue that the drinking age is working, based on the following logic: college-enrolled 18- to 20-year-olds are drinking more, while those under 21 and not in college are apparently deterred by the drinking age. The problem, they say, is with the college environment, not with the law. College administrators need to do more to curb binge drinking.
Anyone who’s been to college recently knows that colleges are far from ignorant of the problem of binge drinking. They invest significant amounts of money and time in alcohol education and in the enforcement of the law—and these efforts haven’t worked. To assert that college campuses (and their lack of enforcement) are the problem ignores the question of a solution. Colleges exist, the culture of binge drinking exists there, and serious efforts of colleges to change this culture have failed.
Researchers who argue that legal 21 has been effective rely heavily on drunk driving statistics. It’s important to consider that legal 21 was only one component of a significant national effort to reduce drunk driving. Thanks to national programs and campaigns, our attitudes about drunk driving have changed. Based on the degree to which the legal drinking age is flouted, it’s more likely that the new public awareness around drunk driving is more important than the drinking age itself, and that if the age were lowered, drunk driving would not simply bounce back to where it was before 1984.
It’s still unpopular to argue for a lower drinking age, especially among the major government health agencies (the NIAAA is part of the National Institutes of Health, which also funded the Washington University study). But it’s not unreasonable to expect those on the ground, like college administrators, to be more open and honest about the failure of legal 21. Any change in our thinking on the legal drinking age will come from them. The Amethyst Initiative is a promising start, and college students who believe in lowering the drinking age should use the model of that organization to start a dialogue on their campuses. For though the organizations behind these two, recent studies don’t support lowering the drinking age, their findings are unequivocal: Binge drinking on college campuses is not going away, and while we decide what to do about it, college students are dying.
Kathleen Reeves graduated from Yale and worked as a field organizer in Iowa for the Obama campaign. She is a freelance writer living in Connecticut.
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— Nancy - Jul 9, 09:47 AM - #The Amethyst Initiative is something I blogged about last year:
www.forstudentpower….
I argued that it’s more than culture that needs to change on college campuses: “An obvious solution is to not make students’ lives so devoid of agency many feel they must ‘live up’ every sliver of freedom they can get. It sounds ironic at first blush, but the solution to students ‘abusing’ their freedom is to give them more of it.”
— ForStudentPower - Jul 9, 02:50 PM - #According to Barrett Seaman’s book, Binge, at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, with approximately 20,000 undergrads, there had been 12 hospital transports in a year compared to Dartmouth’s average 200/year and Middlebury’s 100/year.
Not only is Quebec’s drinking age 18, but McGill’s strategy, specifically with regard to residence life, is about respect, safe space, and harm reduction rather than policy enforcements and taking on a disciplinarian role. If an emergency happens, it’s out in the open, and the residence faculty can take care of it promptly, ensuring the student’s health and safety.
— Cassie - Jul 9, 10:33 PM - #