Choose Responsibility

“Is the 21 Year-Old Drinking Age Working?”
Panel Discussion at the University of Vermont

September 20, 12:30-1:30, Frank Livak Ballroom at the Davis Center

Sponsored by the Center for Health and Wellbeing and Choose Responsibility
Refreshments will be provided

Have you always thought of the drinking age as a settled question? Think again! Come join in an open panel discussion of the issues surrounding the 21 year-old drinking age. In place for more than two decades, the 21 year-old drinking age has had profound effects on young adults, and on college and university communities across the country. This discussion will highlight the arguments on both sides of the question. Panelists include Jay Taylor ’10, UVM police chief Gary Margolis, executive director of MADD Massachusetts, and former Middlebury College President and director of Choose Responsibility. Vermont Cynic editor Austin Danforth ‘08 will moderate the panel. Please come prepared with your questions and opinions on this important policy question.

We hope to see you there! Contact the [CR] office at 802-398-2024 or email info@chooseresponsibility.org if you have questions about the event.

President of Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD), Glynn Birch, issued this response to the recent Parade Magazine article, “Should the Drinking Age be Lowered?”

“We are deeply disappointed in Parade Magazine’s flawed article on the discussions centered around lowering the drinking age. Unfortunately, Parade decided to emphasize the junk science promoted by a few over the longstanding and substantial, peer-reviewed evidence that proves the 21 law saves lives. The fact is there are at least 23,000 Americans alive today because of the 21 law.”

It is regrettable that our friends at MADD, with whom we share an unambiguous opposition to drunk driving, have chosen such intemperate language to respond to the August 12 article in Parade Magazine. The following facts cannot be so easily dismissed as “junk science:”

• According to Ralph Hingson, in two separate peer-reviewed studies, more than 1,000 18-24 year-old lives are lost to alcohol each year in places other than on the roads. That number has been increasing since 1998.
• According to NHTSA, more lives were saved in two years (2002 and 2003) than have allegedly been saved in the history of Legal Age 21.
• According to Alexander Wagenaar, fewer than half of the peer reviewed studies on the subject have shown any relationship between the drinking age and the decline in alcohol-related traffic fatalities.

–[CR] Director John McCardell

You may also want to check out why21.org, MADD’s (well-inspired) response to the increasing prominence of the drinking age debate. We believe that imitation is the highest form of flattery!

Thanks to [CR] volunteer Peter Mastracci of the Pittsburgh area who took the time to write this excellent letter in response to the July 8 article in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Peter makes the argument that the 21 year-old drinking age is an unjustified abridgment of the 18 year-old age of majority.

“Mothers Against Drunk Driving and other advocacy groups that defend the highest drinking age in the world (America is the only non-Muslim country on Earth to impose a drinking age of 21) rationalize the law by saying that it prevents automobile-related deaths. The statistics vary, but even if this were true, it does not rationalize discrimination. If it were discovered that people of a different demographic, such as race or religion, were found to commit a crime more often than others, would it be legal to restrict the rights of its members?”

New England Cable News came to Middlebury this past week to interview John McCardell and members of Choose Responsibility about the ineffectiveness of the 21 year-old drinking age. Here’s their story:

Choose Responsibility found itself in the headlines again today. Two interviews with Choose Responsibility’s John McCardell, one in print in US News and World Report and one on air on NPR’s Here and Now, emphasize the reality of the 21 year-old drinking age’s failure to prevent young adults from consuming alcohol in irresponsible ways.

An editorial by Columnist Radley Balko also appeared online where he discusses at length what has changed in the 20 years since the drinking age was raised to 21. He writes, “But after 20 years, perhaps it’s time to take a second look — a sound, sober (pardon the pun), science-based look — at the law’s costs and benefits. McCardell provides a welcome voice in a debate too often dominated by hysterics. But beyond McCardell, Congress should really consider abandoning the federal minimum altogether or at least the federal funding blackmail that gives it teeth.”

News articles in college newspapers continued to roll in as well: The Middlebury Campus, The Kent Stater.

The argument for an 18 year-old drinking age is beginning to spread. Choose Responsibility was featured in the student newspaper Indiana University. Promisingly, the chief of campus police Jerry Minger was quoted as saying “I am not a big advocate of anything that would create more drinking, but I applaud the fact that (the proposal) has (alcohol) education built in.”

While we would question whether this would actually create any more binge drinking than is actually occurring, we believe that the when looking at the full proposal, the benefits outweigh the possible detriments.

While the Indiana Article is in hard copy, look forward to two more articles in the Vermont Cynic and the Daily Free Press of Boston University later this week.

If you see other recent news articles let us know!

Choose Responsibility Director, John McCardell answered questions concerning the proposal to license and educate young adult drinkers. The transcript is here. The forum, I think, was informative for all the parties involved.

The Chronicle of Higher Education reported today on the recently launched non-profit Choose Responsibility. Chronicle Reporter Paula Wasley writes,

John M. McCardell Jr., president emeritus of Middlebury College, is a respected Civil War scholar. His lectures on the Gettysburg Address command large audiences at alumni meetings, and his seminars on the war always attract eager undergraduates.

Recently the genteel academic threw himself into another conflict. Call it the Battle of the Binge.

The article reviews the basic fronts of the battle between advocates for and against the current 21 year-old legal drinking age. Letting the arguments of the scholars stand for themselves and against one another, Ms. Paula Wasley provides an objective look at how the opposing sides of the drinking age cast their rhetorical planks to construct their own platform on the issue. Though the self-evidence of one particular argument over the other might, or even ought (in my own opinion), to serve one side over the other, Wasley resists the temptation to gloss over the cracks in each side’s argument.

On reading the article one quote, made by MADD Executive Chuck Hurleyr, stands out in light of recent events: “The fact is, legal-age 21 is working better in blue-collar America than in Ivy League America.” This couldn’t be further from the truth. The Fact IS, a freshman at Rider University died when Frat members persuaded him to try and drink a bottle of Absolut Citron Vodka. Rider University isn’t an Ivy League school, and nor is University of Colorado, Colorado State University, Virginia Tech University, San Diego State University, University of Oklahoma or University of Arkansas, all of which experienced fatal alcohol poisonings in recent years.

About two weeks ago Choose Responsibility’s director, John McCardell and I returned from a whirlwind trip to Colorado. While there, we met with interested parents, students, government officials, and college and university administrators to discuss our initiative. We got quite a bit of feedback and know that we’ve made some friends and allies out West! This article, which appeared this week in the Longmont Daily Times-Call, chronicles our reception in the Denver area. While in Colorado, McCardell also taped an interview for a documentary about excessive drinking and the college experience. The film is being put together by the Gordie Foundation, which was created in memory of Gordie Bailey, a freshman at the University of Colorado at Boulder who died after a night of fraternity hazing in September 2004.

This trip will be the first of many as we make our way to campuses and communities around the country to talk about our work at Choose Responsibility. Please contact us if you have an idea for how we could have a presence in your community.

Stay tuned–our full website will go live on Monday, April 9!

On February 18, 2007 the director of Choose Responsibility, and former president of Middlebury College, John McCardell debated a representative from Mothers Against Drunk Drivers over the merits of the 21 year-old drinking age. Here it is:

And on a lighter note: