Waters to wine The fallacy of 21

Author: Mike Waters

As the writer of an alcohol-themed column aimed at college readers - the majority of whom are under the age of 21 - it is high time that I tackle the issue of the drinking age. While other more topical ideas were enticing - drinking in the great outdoors, drinking with parents, drinking in daylight (the now famous "darty") - younger readers would be critically underserved without attention to this important issue. The drinking age debate seems especially important here at Middlebury, given the attention we've gotten from President Emeritus of the College John M. McCardell's Amethyst Initiative and his nonprofit, Choose Responsibility. To support these endeavors, McCardell has made appearances on such esteemed television programs as the NBC's "Nightly News with Brian Williams," CBS' "60 Minutes," and - most impressively - "The Colbert Report." And while McCardell probably brings less controversy than some of Colbert's other guests - say, Bill O'Reilly - the drinking age debate remains a contentious issue.

While all of us have grown up with a national drinking age, the idea itself did not exist prior to the 1980s. The law sprang out of broad legislation aimed at curbing drunk driving, which included several recommendations, the legal drinking age of 21 among them. According to Choose Responsibility, when this legislation was passed, the other recommendations were overlooked and individual states began passing drinking age laws almost immediately. The legislation stipulated that any state with a drinking age lower than 21 years of age would lose 10 percent of its annual federal allotment of highway money, so while there still exists no national law stipulating a legal drinking age, by 1987 all 50 states had laws on the books making 21 the new legal age for the purchase and consumption of alcohol.

Current debate still centers on worries about drunk driving and pits Choose Responsibility against Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD), the main lobbying group in favor of the law. To support its position, MADD cites statistics that indicate a decline in drunken driving fatalities since the imposition of the legal drinking age and frames the debate as choosing between life and death. Arguing against MADD seems nearly impossible - after all, the organization supposedly represents something we're all for (mothers) against something we're all against (drunk driving) - and their framing of the argument makes anyone opposed seem in favor of car crashes with disastrous consequences.

While MADD presents some valid arguments, the legal drinking age of 21 has proven to be a failure. Decreases in drunken driving fatalities are easier attributed to increases in car safety, seat belt use and designated drivers than to the law alone, and the law itself has done little to prevent underage drinking. Instead, as McCardell so effusively argues, the law has driven drinking underground, leading to rises in binge drinking as underage drinkers consume alcohol privately, often in large quantities.

For my part, I see many good reasons to amend the law and bring the drinking age back down to 18. First, the idea of abstinence-only in relation to anything - be it sex, or in this case, drinking - is a na've concept. High-profile teen pregnancies dispute the effectiveness of abstinence-only approaches to sex ("Bristol" comes to mind, and I'm not thinking of the town in Vermont), and a stroll through a college campus on a weekend night similarly forces one to confront the reality of underage drinking. This reality - that kids will drink regardless of the law - means that we should work less to keep them from doing it than to make sure they do it safely. With a lower drinking age, those under 21 would worry less about hiding their drinking and could learn how to drink responsibly. If the age were lowered to 18, kids could better learn to imbibe from their parents, as parents would have the chance to have a legal drink with their children while they still live under the same roof, instead of sending them inexperienced into the overwhelming world of collegiate drinking.

Additionally, I've always found the law about highway funding to be an interesting attachment to alcohol legislation. Given that the main lobby for a higher drinking age is specifically concerned with driving, it seems ironic that the two are so intertwined. In Europe - often cited as the model for a healthy drinking culture - drunk driving would rarely be an issue because of the many options for public transportation. So in addition to our dependence on foreign oil, suburban sprawl, bailouts and minivans, perhaps we can also lay the blame for our questionable drinking age on the auto industry. I'm surprised that no state has lowered its drinking age, highway funding be damned. Tourist revenue alone - from young people coming over the border to purchase alcohol and visit bars - would seem to be enough to make up for the loss of highway funding, although those dollars would probably be better put to use to build up national public transportation infrastructure.

The opportunities for debate are endless - which could be why the issue persists, as all agitated underage drinkers eventually turn 21 and stop caring. So while a solution might not come for some time, young people can express their disapproval with some good old-fashioned civil disobedience - if only Thoreau knew protests could be this fun. Cheers.