| By Keith - Feb 14th, 2007 at 11:21 am EST |
| Also listed in: Campus Progress Blog |
Former Middlebury President John M. McCardell, Jr. is heading up a national campaign to lower the drinking age from 21 to 18.
As reported in The Campus, McCardell has teamed up with students to form the not-for-profit organization Choose Responsibility. The group has spent most of the last year doing research on the effect of the current alcohol age restriction on highway safety.
While not affiliated with Middlebury College, McCardell and his group are speaking to an obvious concern of the students attending Middlebury College and young people in general.
Groups such as Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) lobbied hard for the 1984 National Minimum Drinking Age Act, which forced states to lower their legal drink age to 18 lest they be denied federal transportation funds. The goal? Lower highway fatalities in the United States.
Choose Responsibility, whose recent "white paper" finds the higher drinking age has only a modest impact on highway safety when compared to the safety features of airbags and seatbelts, has the following goal:
Choose Responsibility advocates that states launch alcohol education programs to teach young adults about responsible purchase, possession and consumption. Upon successful completion of a course, a participant could receive a license to consume and purchase alcohol at the age of 18. The license would be legal in the state in which the 18-year-old is a resident, and in the state in which he or she attends college, if they attend out of state. (from The Campus)
Will this be the new cause célèbre of progressive students nation-wide? And how should other activists judge this new campaign?
A good starting point is to ask the obvious: Is our current alcohol age restriction or any governmental manipulation of the drinking age a historically new phenomenon?
Not at all.
Let’s look the state of Virginia. Virginia’s original 1934 ABC Act (the Act that first placed state government regulations on the alcohol industry) placed the legal drinking age at 21.
In 1974 this restriction was lowered to 18 for beer, but remained at 21 for liquor or wine. And in 1981 this allowance was raised to 19 if one was drinking off-premises.
Then in 1985 Virginia deemed that all persons born after July 1, 1966, had to be 21 to purchase and consume any alcohol legally.
And all this happened after America's thirteen year experiment with the complete prohibition of alcohol.
So it seems arbitrariness is the norm for state or national restrictions on the consumption and purchase of alcohol.
But, moving onto the more critical question, should activists rally behind this campaign coming out of Middlebury?
Though activists should be aware that joining this campaign comes with a serious risk, the possible rewards of energizing such a campaign clearly outweigh the costs.
Choose Responsbility engages this public policy question seriously, arriving at a nuanced position and backing up their position with research. The group has performed empirical research and wishes to engage state and national figures in a serious public health question: Is the nation safer by having a higher drinking age?
Framing all our policy debates on such clear-headedness would be a godsend for American politics.
And as a result of this apparent professionalism, this organization can show students how to effectively engage in the political dialogue on a unifying, non-partisan issue.
But there are risks. If this becomes the main banner that students unite around, it won’t be surprising if student voices are ignored by politicians on other issues—deeming students as only capable of arguing for “immature” reforms.
The drinking age issue is one charged by strong emotions. As such, it is likely that even if Choose Responsibility's position is objectively correct, students may not be able to overcome their likely opponents: MADD along with flocks of concerned parents and grandparents.
Yet if this campaign can be used as a tool to show students how they have a voice, it could make the 18 to 21 demographic be a highly skilled and mobilized voting bloc in American politics on a wide range of issues.
And that accomplishment would be something worth making a toast to.
!
Comments are closed for this post.
But I can understand this move--it seems odd that we would trust 18 year-olds with the right to determine the leadership of their communities and their country, and to have reason enough to enter into voluntary contracts, and yet not trust them to have reason enough to drink responsibly.
And I'm a person who hardly ever drinks.
Kids being able to vote at 16 instead of 18 will give people some feel-good civic engagement, but it only rises to the level of "Well, isn't that nice".
The 21 year old drinking age encourages stupid behavior in college like binge drinking, which leads to increased risk of things like date rape and sexual assault.
That's a much bigger priority to me.
I'm not disagreeing that there are societal ills that stem from the unrealistic 21 year-old drinking age, and that's a pragmatic concern. But I'm having a hard time finding a philosophical justification for the 18 year-old voting age. I think both are fairly arbitrary, and neither serves its intended purpose. And I think amending one can lead to amending the other--do you think that increasing the voting population to include younger voters is going to make it more likely or less likely that the drinking age is lowered? Will it make contentious social issues like gay marriage and drug policy more likely to be addressed by policymakers, or less? Will school boards be more responsive to student needs instead of interest group meddling, or less?
Seriously, my 'responsible user' of alcohol is no one else's business but my own--I'm the one who will pay the consequence for any misuse.
I really hate the idea of anther piece of plastic that I have to carry around in my wallet to do the same things I could of done in the past.
A dumb ideal all around.
Clearly there are statistics linking not only car accidents, abuse, sexual assult, and many other things.
When someone is under the influence circumstances change, and far from only being able to effect yourself- your actions almost certianly effect all those around you.
Which is persicely the reason that it's an insult to imply that 18 year olds are old enough to essentially run the country, die for the country, other very important decisions like marriage, but can't make responcible decisions regarding alchohol.
While I agree that there needs to be some kind of training or social conditioning to make sure people don't just rush out to be stupid- because 18 year olds can be, like any age- there needs to be some sort of preperation.
I don't think a license is the way though, I didn't get much out of the DMV's driver training- but there should definately be something because drinking affects everyone.
So, being totally in favor of dropping the drinking age to 16, (maybe you learn how to drink - and lose your fascination with it - before you learn how to drive, eh?), let me say that I think it makes for a terrible youth issue. If college administrators, legislators, social advocacy groups etc, want to push for it, by all means they should, I'd support them, and wish them luck. But if the main push came from kids, people wouldn't understand that there is more than self-interest motivating the policy change.
Second, its patronizing to take relatively inconsequential issues that only apply to young people and try to rally them around it, because by association, I think they'd still feel somewhat abstracted from or unempowered with serious political issues. Kids aren't taken seriously by the political establishment, and this won't help.
Regardless, if you want to galvanize kids into political awareness, I don't think this would be successful as an issue at rallying students, and even if it was, I doubt it would spread into any broader political concerns. So much of this (whether beer, wine or liquor is acceptable, at what age, in what context, to what extent) is cultural, there is a limitation to what legislation could accomplish.
Are people underage still drinking, of course. But it is an enforcement and accessibility issue. Not a responsibility issue.
We shouldn't be teaching minors responsible drinking anymore than we should be teaching them responsible marjiuana smoking or herion use.
Why not mandatory ignition interlocks on all vehicles? That would almost eliminate drunk driving, leaving MADD without its primary raison d'etre and its primary excuse to promote bigotry and government-sponsored, unprovoked violence against innocent people under 21.
Mandatory interlocks on all vehicles? Hold it! Now you're talking about !!MY!! freedoms instead of the freedoms of people under 21. Hear the howls of protest.
Do the math. The interlocks cost money, but the cost will drop with economies of scale. So will insurance rates and taxes, when the government no longer has to imprison all these drunk drivers for homicides and murders they're now committing.
Tom Alciere
Webmaster, Underage Drinkers Against Drunk Driving
The Puritan "ghost" hangs over our culture...and is reflected in the hauntings in the forms of puritannical "blue laws" on alcohol, sex and gambling that pop up everytime the conservatives have majority power.