Choose Responsibility

In the interest of full disclosure, we present below both the link to MADD’s press release and the text of Choose Responsibility’s response.

http://www.madd.org/news/12045

Science speaks for itself” (MADD press release). Indeed it does. While it is true that “almost 50 peer-reviewed studies” have “found that an increased drinking age significantly lowers alcohol-related fatalities” (MADD press release), an equal number of studies have found no relationship between the drinking age and alcohol-related fatalities (Wagenaar and Toomey, 2002).

Thus, if science is allowed to speak for itself, we must not listen selectively.

While it is true that alcohol-related traffic fatalities have declined since the age was raised to 21, the downward trend began before the law was changed, and it has remained essentially flat for the last decade (NHTSA). Meanwhile, more than 1,000 18-24 year-old lives are being lost to alcohol each year off the roadways, and this number is increasing at an alarming rate (Hingson, 1998, 2001). These lives are being put at risk in the dark corners and behind the closed doors to which Legal Age 21 have banished them.

Thus, we need to look at all the ways alcohol, and the drinking age, put lives at risk, not just at traffic fatalities. The 21 year-old drinking age has forced drinking underground. Clandestine, goal-oriented, unsupervised drinking, a consequence of Legal Age 21, is putting an increasing number of young adult lives at risk.

While it is true that “the neurotoxic effect of excessive alcohol use” (MADD press release) can affect the development of the adolescent brain, no one is advocating excessive alcohol use. Researchers involved in studies of the adolescent brain have stated that, unless the drinking age is raised to 25, when the adolescent brain is fully developed, there is nothing magical about some other age. Indeed, at least one such researcher, Professor Scott Swartzwelder of Duke University, has stated that his studies do “not mean that an 18 year-old who has a beer or two every couple of weeks is doing irreparable damage to her brain. It is the 18 year-old (or 30 year-old for that matter!) who downs five or six drinks on his way to a dance that worries me.”

Thus, we mustn’t be misled by scare tactics. We must listen carefully to what scientists are saying. Most of the rest of the world, where the age is lower than 21, exhibits no evidence of brain impairment. Moderate, responsible use of alcohol poses little neurological risk. Excessive use of alcohol, at any age, may be health- or life-threatening. Clandestine drinking, fostered by Legal Age 21, raises that threat.

“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!

During the early 1980s, when state drinking ages were fluctuating wildly across the nation, Vermonters held firm with an 18 year-old drinking age until forced to raise it to 21 by the National Minimum Drinking Age Act. Then-governor Richard Snelling vetoed the state legislature’s attempts to raise the drinking age to 19 twice, once in 1982 and once in 1983. Snellings primary opposition to raising the drinking age arose from the belief that it is contradictory to allow 18 year-olds to vote and enlist in the army but not to consume alcohol. He also believed that the raising the drinking age would do little to change the complex issue of alcohol abuse, especially among young people“Until such time as adults cease believing that being drunk is funny or socially acceptable, there is no reason to expect any significant change in the behavior of our young people.” (As quoted in “Vermont continues to resist rise in drinking age,” UPI Wire, 20 April 1983)

Even more interesting than Snelling’s measured opposition to a higher drinking age were his ideas for addressing the problem of drunk driving and alcohol abuse among young people. In 1982, he proposed a required alcohol education course for all 18-20 year olds and a special ID card that would allow them to purchase alcohol after completing the course.

“‘There is no single stroke-of-the pen solution to the very complex social problem of teen-age drinking,’ Snelling said

‘Educational programs have been effective and I believe it is perfectly proper and prudent that young adults ages 18-20 who want to drink in Vermont be exposed to the laws of Vermont regarding alcohol and the tragic costs of its abuse.’

A Snelling aide said he was unaware of a similar program anywhere else in the country.

In April, Snelling vetoed a bill raising Vermont’s legal drinking age from 18 to 19, saying that if 18-year-olds are old enough to vote, they are old enough to drink.

Since then, however, his Democratic opponent in the 1982 gubneratorial race, Lt. Gov. Madeleine Kunin, has made a campaign issue out of the question.

Timothy Hayward, executive assistant to the governor, said Snelling’s proposal would require all 18-, 19- and 20-year-olds, even those from out of state, to have a special ID card showing they’ve attended the class in order to buy alcohol in Vermont.” (“Governor would require drinking course for youths,” Associated Press, 10 June 1982)

The ideas behind Snelling’s 25 year-old remarks are echoed clearly in Choose Responsibility’s own proposal to lower the drinking age to 18 through a system of education and licensing. Perhaps Vermont’s long time governor was onto a winning idea that just needed a few decades to percolate!

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:

The right to fight for your country, to enlist, serve, and potentially die, is an oft-cited justification for an 18 year-old drinking age. “If you are old enough to die for your country,” so the maxim goes, “then you are old enough to sit down and buy a beer.” It’s a powerful argument, and a common one at that. But it is only a part of something far greater that is often over-looked when used to rationalize an 18 year-old drinking age argument. There is great injustice in the fact that you can die for a country against your will (to be drafted) that doesn’t grant you with the fullest privileges of adulthood. But in some way I think it means more that you can voluntarily join the military and risk your life, yet still be denied a mug of beer.

It’s about justice. For better or worse, the United States has determined that at age 18 you become an adult. By the widest of definitions, this means that you are now legally responsible for your actions. You can buy and smoke cigarettes even though you know that, with time, they’ll probably give you lung cancer. You may even purchase property, strike binding legal contracts, or go into debt. But most importantly (for the sake of this argument), is the fact that, at 18, you can vote and hold office. 18 is the age of majority, the age at which one finally becomes part of the ruling faction, the democracy’s people. Sure, you can die for your country and not be allowed to buy a beer, and that is a travesty, but it is the over-arching disenfranchisement of responsibility for those who are in all respects legally responsible that is abhorrent.

Critics are quick to point out that 18 is not an Age of Majority, but one age amongst many that together mark the gradual path to adulthood. This argument notes that young adults cannot drink until 21, rent cars until 25, run for the U.S. Senate until they are 30, and run for President until 35. This is evidence of a graduated adulthood. But this argument is simply not sound. First and foremost, rental car companies are not legally kept from renting cars to those under 25, it is a decision made by insurance companies. In fact, some rental companies do rent to those under 25, and higher rates compensate for the potential liability. In short, 25 is not an age of increased adultness.

Neither is 30. Article II Section 3 of the US Constitution mandates that: “No person shall be a Senator who shall not have attained to the age of thirty years.” But strangely enough this clause has not preemptively kept individuals from running for Senate. Indeed, the man who John F. Kennedy called one of the 5 best senators in the history of the Republic, Henry Clay, was first elected to the Senate at age 28. While no one has yet to challenge the legitimacy of the Presidential Age Requirement, it is clear that the Constitutional age requirements are something quite different than graduated adulthood markers. As the lone mentions of age in all of the Constitution and Bill of Rights, the are requirements are more appropriately seen as exceptions to full adulthood, rather than benchmarks of adulthood.

So as it stands now when you turn 18 you are legal to engage in all things other adults do except drink alcohol and run for President. It’s bizarre but accurate. Somewhere along the line, our society failed to remember that individuals, by becoming an adult, become responsible for their actions. Whether you are 18, 19, 20, 38, 39, or 40, you are an adult, and when you drink and drive, just as when you smoke in public areas or ignore traffic laws, you are responsible . By maintaining a drinking age different than 18, our society sends a signal that drinking and driving (the original target of the 21 MLDA) is worse in consequence for young adults than it is for older adults. This opens up a Pandora’s box when it comes to expanding the logic against real and perceived public health threats. Targeting groups by age beyond some measure of adulthood validates the fears raised in the Federalist Papers that a democratic system of government offers too little protection for the rights of minority factions against the will of the masses. Above and beyond its deleterious consequences, the 21 year-old drinking age threatens the integrity of egalitarianism in an otherwise representative democracy. 18 year-old drinking age is an act of justice.

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!

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:

Competing editorials in the Bennington Banner of Vermont show the complexity of the drinking age question. On one hand is a high school administrator, who in his interactions with high school students experiences the problems and tragedies that occur with underage drinking. His reaction is understandable: strengthen enforcement of the current law. After all, the logic holds, if we want young adults to stop drinking, then cracking down on them hard would seem like way to do it. The following day, the editorial board of the Bennington paper, responded to the op-ed, taking the opposite view.

“Ultimately, when those simplistic and repressive controls are finally lifted, there are no internal controls left to take over. . . . As a society, we somehow have to allow teens to drink, if they wish, in supervised, controlled venues — and we have to educate them — before they are allowed into bars and package stores. We can’t just hide the booze away and hope they wait until they are 21. Unfortunately, that’s what we are doing today.”

And so we are left with two choices, to maintain the status quo, to accept that this is the best we can do, or to try something different, something new and innovative. On the surface, a 21 year-old drinking ought to help keep alcohol from reaching minors, by the fact that it makes alcohol illegal to consume and difficult to obtain. In certain cases that may very well be the case. But more often than not, those classified by the law as “underage” are obtaining and drinking alcohol. In the end, we are faced with a law that is out of step with our cultural attitudes towards alcohol, which encourages violation and breeds disrespect for law.

In the more than two decades that have passed since its implementation, the 21 year-old drinking age has created a climate in which terms like “binge” and “pregame” have come to describe young peoples’ choices about alcohol. The goal-oriented drinking that is now common under the current law, though dangerous, may more importantly be a consequence of the law itself. In an environment where drinking must be kept hidden from the law, the rituals surrounding alcohol consumption come to reflect those environmental pressures. As those rituals become empowered, they come to define and give weight to the culture of drinking itself. Thus, as drinking to evade the law inherently becomes an act of drinking as quickly as possible, those acts of goal-oriented drinking become part of a unique culture.