An Honest Conversation About Alcohol

Legal drinking ages never stop anyone from drinking if they want to. Did Prohibition stop drinking? It pushes it underground and when it goes underground its much more fun and much more dangerous and out of control. The forbidden is always more tempting. If 18 years olds can go to war, go to college, marry then they should be able to buy a beer with their pizza. Lowering the legal limit for intoxication to.08 is not keeping alcoholics from drinking and driving. People driving with a.08 intoxication level are not the ones killing people. I would bet there was not one incident of a alcohol related death with the level of.08. You are simply not going to stop alcoholics from drinking or kids from drinking by making laws and lowering intoxication levels. My son has done his college internships as a merchant sailor and travels all over the world. He can legally drink in every country in the world at 18 except the USA. I wonder if other countries have as much problem with under age drinking as the USA?

Diane, at 10:00 am EDT on August 11, 2007

Thank you

This conversation is LONG overdue. I left the US to goto the UK to teach because the students here are more mature. I’m certain that one of the reasons is that there are nice pubs on campus. Sure, students drink to excess, but you never hear of 21 year olds dying on their birthdays after doing 21 vodka shots

Thank you, at 5:45 am EST on February 16, 2007

Last semester, one of my students (actually a varsity athlete) did an argument and persuasion assignment paper on the topic and came up with similar data, which at the time astonished me. I had thought nothing could persuade me, on that age 21 drinking law—but data can be a powerful persuader, if people only look at it. He added his own informal survey of 100 random students under 21 at our small university, asking if they ever drank beer or any other form of alcohol, knowing they were illegal at their age, and 99 said yes. Dry dorms, dry campus, very very wet downtown.

college teacher, at 7:20 am EST on February 16, 2007

License requirements

So the former president of a $44,300-a-year private college wants a “conversation” about “drinking licenses.”

Well — in an era when 20-year-old starlets go to Betty Ford-style clinics and a 39-year-old celebrity dies with methadone in her fridge — why not have “authentic” license requirements?

* License classes to be taught at 7 AM Fridays and Saturdays, as well as 7 PM Fridays and Saturdays. Taught by independent, third-party providers who report to the local police department, not the college.

* Requirement to “volunteer” to work with the college building crews on garbage pick-up and snow removal, to build “character.”

* If caught DWI between age 18-21 — penalties tripled, to “keep it real.” Hey — no guts, no glory.

* Semi-annual educational assessment by ETS or ACT; those below 70% of objectives lose drinking licenses. (And cable TV hook-up.)

Oh, yes, about UK college student drinking — all we’d have to do become British, right? That would only take 20 years, wouldn’t it?

C. Bigsby, at 8:16 am EST on February 16, 2007

Lower the drinking age; raise the driving age.

Jane, at 8:55 am EST on February 16, 2007

What to Use is the Topic

It is beyond me why alcohol is permitted to be sold and other drugs are not.

I am told that the great experiment proved people cannot be taught not to drink. That is hog wash. But before I would try again I would want justification. Does the use of alcohol lead to the use of other drugs.

Once that is in, MADD, the State of Oklahoma (publish of the drinkers at the Oklahoma Golf and Country Club on the front page of the Oklahoman and Time to induce the State to go Wet under Gov Ed Edmundson -a dry) and those against prostitution (the picture of the John on TV) have proved that if the penalty is harsh, behavior can be altered.

Take the car, publish the names, mandatory jail sentences are the remedies to abhorent criminal behavior.

What drugs are legal and which are not is the topic, the age to use them is a subtopic.

This is a subject for experts — the major problems to overcome are the profit and taxes from the sale of alcohol and illicit profits from the sale of other drugs.

William Sumner Scott, J. D.

Judicial Equality Foundation, Inc.

wss@jefound.org

William Sumner Scott, J.D., at 9:20 am EST on February 16, 2007

Hidden drinking issues

Inside Higher Education,

The conversation and new focus on college drinking is very positive. The key point of the new focal point, to me, is that there are major changes over the past 15 years.

College students under the age of 21 once went to dances, parties, and had a load of fun with a keg of beer in the backyard or the cellar. That was great, the centerpiece was the party and the fun in a very public setting, not merely massive consumption of beer. The changes today? The majority of college kids are hiding behind closed doors and they are not dealing with kegs of beer. They are drinking far more potent hard liquor just as fast as they can get it down their throats. “Jack Daniels” night on Sundays, “Jim Beam parties” on Wednesdays on most campus dorm areas typically start about 4 p.m. most days of the week, meaning that by 6 p.m. an army of young folks are driving and walking to the downtown bars or any other place they can illegal drink and they are not fit to be out.

Wonder why the rage of date rape, fires and other criminal issues are rampant? I once worked at a private college where an 11 a.m. fire in a fraternity was started by two students firing up a stack of text books and papers in the building basement following final exams. In the old floors above them were dozens of fellow students sleeping and passed out from a huge night of hard-core drinking. Smoke detectors were either missing or faulty. The fire chief said angrily to the President, “we are lucky we aren’t bringing body bags to the scene.”

Why do we tent to wait until the body bags and the funeral services are called for before taking action on serious matters?

The discussion on alcohol abuse on our campuses should start with honesty and a reality check. We higher education folks would do well to start with an open mind and recognize that policies on this issue are not working and in the best interests of our customers, our students and their parents. It is also an emormous brand and reputation liability we have placed on our shoulders in higher education, a predicament far deeper than the generational images of Animal House.

Michael M. Brown

Michael M. Brown, Director of PR at Northwest State, at 9:20 am EST on February 16, 2007

Underage Drinking

Let’s review what you can do legally at 18:You can leave your parents house and live on the street, you can get married and decide to raise children, you can own a bar and hire and fire staff, you can drive, you can join the military and give your life before you are 21, you are asked to choose a career and go to College, you can get a lease, you can own your own home, you can buy a car, and oh yeah: you can vote for the most powerful person in the world to run your country...but wait a minute you adult, you are way to young to know how to drink!! Do you realize how ridiculous that is!!!

This is why young peole abuse alcohol. You cannot create an environment that allows for these types of contradictions. Eiropen countries have no drinking age limitations and they have far fewer alcoholics and even less drunk driving accidents than we do. Why, because their children have been indoctrinated that alcohol is not a big deal and that there is a righ way to use it at any age.

We are far behind the rest of the world in teaching our children to be responsible adults. In the West Indies, where I am from, children at the age of 15 have repsonsibilties that would shake America. But there we know that responsibilty early, leads to less discourse and abuse later. Which is right were we as America are.

It’s a simple psychological fact: The first thing you did when your mother told you not to play in the yard when she was not around was: you played in the yard. Becasue you wrre treated as a child, you reacted as a child. If you treat our 18 year old children as a adults, they will respond as a adults. It’s not rocket science!!

Curt, Multicultural Director at PSU, at 10:35 am EST on February 16, 2007

From a teenage perspective

As an eighteen year old male in this country, ready to head off to college next year, I think it appropriate that I weigh in on this debate. Personally, I believe that Mr. McCardell is absolutely right. It’s absolutely preposterous to treat eighteen year olds as legal adults, then tell us we are not responsible enough to drink. The best thing I can say about this is that by the current letter of the law, eighteen year olds are allowed to obtain a marriage license without parental consent. However, the ability to legally drink is still three years off. In effect, the country is telling us that we are responsible enough to have children and raise a family, and care for the safety and well-being of another human being, when apparently we cannot even handle ourselves well enough to drink responsibly. Somehow, that seems a bit strange to me. The second point I’d like to bring up is the availablity issue. Though many parents, officials and “grown-ups” may like to spout about how there is no way a teenager could obtain alcohol in their town, or their city or their county, where there is a will, there is a way. And because the law does not permit teenagers to drink in public, it all happens privately. On average, I would bet that most high school students consume less or the same amount of alcohol as many of their parents. Yet teenage drinking is still seen as a problem. Why? Because while their father may have two beers a night, every night, totalling fourteen beers a week, the teenager will go out on friday or saturday night, knock down eight or ten beers in thirty minutes to an hour, and be absolutely smashed. The legal drinking age has, in effect, caused teenagers to do what their grandparents and great-grandparents did during Prohibition; go underground. However, there is a much bigger outcry against underage drinking than there ever was against Prohibition, and so we cannot go to speakeasies and have a beer or two. If we want to consume, as we are inevitably drawn to do, by peer pressure, or simple curiosity, we are forced to steal alcohol from our parents or go to a party, where we will more than likely go over the line between drunk and dangerously drunk. I have been to parties and seen girls too drunk to stand up being pushed back under the “beer bong” for “one more chug.” By this point, most of you may be wondering why I’ve said these things, as they seem to argue against my point. But consider this; put one hundred or more rowdy teenagers together in a house, get most if not all of them drunk, and it becomes a mob scene, just as subject to mob mentality as a riot or protest or mosh pit. By forcing the teenagers underground, into houses that are completely devoid of parental guidance, with alcohol and probably other illicit drugs obtained with it, we have not only exacerbated the problem; we have created it. The hysteria in this country, and especially in my home county has gotten out of hand. Consider this story. A week before the senior prom at the local high school, a teenager driving home from a party drunk crashed and died. A few of my friends, at their senior prom, had a party at one of their houses. They parents were home, and the kids slept out in a back field in tents. The house was gated, and the gate was not only locked, it had a Chevrolet Suburban parked infront of it. In addition to this, the parents had not only taken away the keys from every kid in attendance, but they had gone tent-to-tent searching for alcohol a number of times, and poured out more than a few beers found, and turned away kids who had not been invited to the party. Yet, at four in the morning, another teenager from the school, apparently disgruntled about not being invited to the party, called the cops, alerting them that there was beer and other illicit substances. The police arrived, did a thorough search, and turned up a case or two and less than an ounce of marijuana. Only two kids at the party escaped the courtroom, and the parents escaped providision charges only because the kids stood up for the parents and denied they had given them the alcohol. Yet in the public forum, the parents, who my family knows personally, was villified. This sort of thing is ridiculous. The parents did everything they could to make the situation safe; even if they HAD allowed drinking, no one was going to drive and no one was going to get seriously hurt. But they didn’t; they did everything in their power to stop the kids from drinking anyways. And yet they were still strung up for “allowing” a party at which they “knew there would be alcohol.” What nobody seemed to remember was the kid who tipped of the police was drunk when they did it, and at a party without parental supervision, and where kids did drive home drunk. The legal drinking age has to be lowered. We’re never going to stop teenagers from drinking; all we can do is curb it, and becoming stricter and harsher in punishments is only going to force it deeper underground into more and more dangerous situations. Do you think the parents who hosted the party will ever host another one? Not likely. Drinking has become so taboo in this country that it is scary. Authorities point to binge drinking by teens as a reason for not giving them legal access to alcohol; I think the legal limit being so high is what drives many teens to binge drinking; they can’t drink any other way, and nobody is going to stop them from drinking at all. I think that Mr. McCardell’s idea is right on the money; educate teenagers, then give them a “learner’s permit” as it were, for their drinking rights. Everybody will be a lot safer that way.

Solus, at 6:45 pm EST on February 16, 2007

a border town to Mexico

A license to drive. A license to drink. I think people should have to have a license to have or participate in having children.

I work at an institution that is a border town to Mexico. Thus, a common concern is students going to Mexico to drink... to be treated like an adult. Students, from what I hear, go to Mexico to enjoy freedom and the ability to drink. But then there’s the risk of US citizens getting themselves in trouble in Mexico, which has very different common laws and ways of treating suspicious wrong doing, outside of or in conjunction with consuming alcohol. I am sure fellow institutions bordering Canada to the North face the same challenges as those of us in the southwest.

“The legal drinking age for different countries varies dramatically, from 0 to 21, as seen in the table below. The United States has the highest drinking age in the world.” www2.potsdam.edu/hansondj/LegalDrinkingAge.html

shannon, coordinator of residence life, at 8:55 pm EST on February 16, 2007

Culture

It’s clear that much of the behavior in question is heavily dependent upon one’s culture. Western Europeans in general drink early and don’t binge as much. Likewise I witnessed a great increase in the occurrence of the “designated driver” in the mid-late 1980s. To suggest that it’s impossible to change a group’s behavior is ridiculous.

John, at 8:50 pm EST on February 17, 2007

As an American academic living and working overseas (Australia) and as someone who was able to drink from the age of 18 in the U.S., I could never understand the U.S’s obsession with raising the legal drinking age when it occurred when I was stuying at university. The likes of MADD and other lobbyists consistently cite the lower DWI arrests and accidents due to the raising the drinking age to 21, yet they never seemd to focus on reponsible driving behaviour.

Having lived in Europe and Australia, where the emphasis is placed on responsible drinking and driving practices, and where the penalties for drunk driving are severe (zero tolerance for learner/new drivers, instant loss of license if caught and even jail terms), I could never understand why this was not the focus of those who campaiged for a 21 drinking age. Responsible drinking habits, best learned when one is still under parental supervision, and emphasising co-reponsibility amongst peers for driving is the way to go. It’s about time serious discussion, “based on the facts” and not emotions and moralistic judgements, take place.

K. Daly, at 9:00 pm EST on February 18, 2007

drinking age not the problem

The debate over the drinking age sidesteps the real issues, which are way too complex to be solved by raising or lowering the drinking age. I have studied the British higher education system, visited at least 8 British universities, and spoken with many British educators. Alcohol is a problem in Britain. Yes, they do have to pick up students off the ground from parking lots because they are passed out. Yes, they do have problems with vandalism and violence due to drunkenness. Yes, alcohol is a major part of their higher education experience. The first things students brag about is that they have the best pub on campus. Anyone who tells you otherwise is trying to pull the wool over your eyes, or is just not educated about the reality. The UK has serious alcohol-related issues in general including major healthcare problems related to alcohol use. Raising or lowering the drinking age in the states will not solve problems related to alcohol, just as it has not solved alcohol-related problems anywhere in the world. So, what are the real, complex, messy issues involved? What makes anyone turn to substance abuse in any form? And how can we solve those problems?

Connie, at 12:30 pm EST on February 19, 2007

Drinking vs. Drunkenness

I applaud the efforts to bring true critical thinking and open discussion to this issue, not to mention more rigorous critique of the research that claims that the raising the drinking age “directly resulted” in reduced drinking and drunk driving.

Two thoughts to share:(1) How about we lower the drinking age to 18 to be consistent with all other definitions of legal adulthood AND focus on laws that have to do with public drunkenness. After all, isn’t the real problem about drunkenness and not merely drinking? And, this is not limited to 18 to 20 year olds. How about you get a $100 citation if you’re caught publicly drunk (above a certain blood alcohol level)?

(2) I wonder how the U.S. military deals with drinking by soldiers under 21. When young soldiers return to base after a patrol or battle, does the military prevent them from grabbing a beer if they’re under 21? I bet not.

John S, at 5:50 pm EST on February 20, 2007

I agree with many of the comments made. Although this is a complex issue, it does not necessarily have to be. I too, think that this country has created more problems than it has solved with the advent of the 21 only drinking laws. Having grown up in a state, (Ohio), which allowed 3.2% beer consumption at the age of 18, it was very common in our Senior year of high school, to go to parties where we were allowed to drink a few beers and parents were always present. I don’t recall too many kids getting “out of hand,” because it would have been embarrassing for them, disrepectful to the parents hosting the parties, and their parents would have been called to come and get them and there would have been consequences at home for them to face. Also at special family occasions, we older kids were allowed to have a glass of wine and we discussed responsible drinking with our family. I was always told that if I wanted to drink at home, it was ok as long as my parents were around. Guess what! I knew that my parents trusted me, so there was no impetus to go out and sneak around behind their backs. Today, I have two college graduates and one who is a freshman in college, and their comments to me have been that because the rules are so strict on college campuses, and the stakes for getting caught are so high, the kids are getting severely inebriated before they go out, so that they won’t get caught drinking in public and kicked out of school. As a result, we are actually encouraging irresponsible drinking by our lack of trust in our young people. Conversely, I have heard many comments tying the driving age to the drinking age. That is not the solution. The solution is to continue to make the penalties for drunken driving so severe that one would be crazy to consider it. I have seen a great deal of attention being paid to having a “designated driver” by all ages. This is a good thing. Instead of focusing our attention on forbidding alcohol, let’s talk about education. By this, I mean, let’s make it a taboo to be drunk and out of control. Instead, let’s teach our kids to drink responsibly, if they choose to drink at all, instead of making any use of alcohol inherently bad. Keep the discussion going.One last point! Because of today’s restrictions and consequences, kids always find the home where no parent is present or the off-campus house where there are no campus security guards. As I said, the stakes are too high. Honestly, I think the kids would much prefer to be in a home or college venue where they could drink in moderation, where there would be parents or alums or faculty and where they would not experience the pressure to be out of control. Kids actually prefer some restrictions, it makes them feel safer. I have seen this many times. Let’s get smart about this issue. There is too much at stake!

Anne Woolsey, at 7:50 pm EST on February 20, 2007

Public vs. Private Consumption

The main effect of the 21 drinking age in the United States has been to reduce the public consumption of alcohol by those under 21. By cutting off the traditional venues of social drinking to persons under 21, e.g. pizza parlors, restaurants, cafes, bars, pubs, the laws have had the effect of forcing drinking in the 18-20 age group indoors, and out of cultural view. This principle is both de facto and de jure—for instance, in California, where I was raised, it is not illegal for those under 21 to drink on private property, only for responsible adults, such as parents to provide alcohol. Of course, this is ridiculous, and only forces young adults to learn drinking behavior from their peers. My parents, aware of the cultural problem of irresponsible drinking, always allowed my brothers and me to drink a glass of wine with the family at holidays. This is the sort of responsible behavior that can best be taught at home. Once I enetered high school, however, I noticed the effect that the drinking age had on consumption. Drinking was mostly done at “keggers” or other parties where many high school students would come together after dark to consume as much alcohol as possible. The parties may have been fun, but the focus was on the consumption of alcohol rather than bonhomie. I myself, sucked into the bacchanalian whirlpool, went to the hospital on one occasion (a very valuable, embarrasing, and dangerous lesson about binge drinking), and one of the parties that I attended resulted in a carful of inebriated students getting into an accident. Contrasted with my positive drinking experiences, whether at family gatherings or cooking out with friends and having a few beers, these parties seem like a real waste. But how was a teenager to tell that when mention of responsible drinking was taboo in places such as school (the only drinking education we had consisted of JUST SAY NO, etc.). It is important to lower the drinking age to eighteen and to bring this topic into the open so that our nation’s next leaders, college students, can live more safely and responsibly.

Ed, at 4:15 am EST on March 1, 2007