Teenage wasted land

Drinking age should be reconsidered, college teens don't need to be babied when it comes too alcohol

By: Michael Warren

Posted: 9/8/08

On July 17, 1984, a date that lives in infamy, President Ronald Reagan signed into law the Uniform Drinking Age Act, establishing a nationwide drinking age, 21. Looking at the information they had when making the decision, the move made sense at the time.

Prior to the Uniform Drinking Age Act - because the states individually set drinking ages - an unforeseen problem arose. Because the states had different drinking ages, youths who were underage in one state could drive across a border to a state with a lower minimum age to procure alcohol or have a drink at a bar. The act is innocent enough, but the result was horrifying: so many young people acting irresponsibly and dying in alcohol related incidents during these excursions that the areas where a high-age state met a low-age state earned the macabre nickname "blood borders." Something clearly had to be done, and the uniform minimum was the result. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration data supports the move, claiming that setting the minimum age to 21 has cut traffic fatalities involving drivers ages 18-20 by 13 percent.

This isn't to say that the drinking age should be left where it is. Their organization, Amethyst Initiative, is championing the call for a renewed and objective discussion about drinking laws.

Experts are advocating change. According to Ruth C. Engs, a professor of applied health sciences at Indiana University, drinking and driving related variables among young people have been trending downward since 1980, before the law was passed. She contends that factors other than the drinking age and per person consumption contributed heavily to the decline in traffic fatalities, such as designated driver programs, increased seat belt and air bag usage, safer automobiles and lower speed limits. That assessment doesn't even include the impact of the elimination of "blood border" deaths, which are purged by a national, unified policy regardless of the drinking age.

The higher drinking age has problems of its own. There is a dangerous imbalance of enticement and restriction. Young adults under 21 are exposed to a popular culture in which binge drinking is celebrated, the weekend begins on Thursday night, and Animal House is held as the cinematic constitution of college life. Booze is the new cigarettes. It is cooler and infinitely more dangerous to our immediate health.

Engs' research revealed that the percentage of students who reported "vomiting after drinking" and "getting lower grade because of drinking" rose after the law came into effect, among other activities which are indicative of alcohol abuse. A study by an organization working in tandem with the United States Department of Health and Human Services found that an estimated 57.8 percent of full-time college students aged 18 to 20 admitted to using alcohol in the past month, and 40.1 percent said that they had engaged in binge drinking. The alcohol taboo has created what Amethyst Initiative calls "A culture of dangerous, clandestine 'binge-drinking'"

Again, the country finds itself with an unworkable drinking age policy. Even as we begin to see the patchwork nature of the 1980s policy as a major cause for increased deaths, eight states (Kentucky, Missouri, Minnesota, South Carolina, South Dakota, Wisconsin, and Vermont) are considering their policies at the state level, and in so doing reinstating the practice of drunken adolescence for minors everywhere. Probably not the best choice.

What exactly should the federal government do? First of all, some other laws need to be tweaked like raising fines for alcohol related crimes or mandating alcohol awareness classes for people who are coming of age. The age doesn't have to be lowered to 18;

adding one year would have a similar effect

without destroying senior class attendance in every high school in the country. Other things could be done with the drinking age, like having one age for the purchase of beer and wine, and another for stronger spirits, as is the case in several European countries.

As is the case with most things worth discussing, there is no correct answer. The intensity of the debate will wax and wane as battle lines are drawn and forgotten, and the age probably won't drop until we're the ones shouting that our 18-year-old babies are too fragile to be drinking that devil water. Oh it will pass! And we'll have earned every gray hair we get as a result.