Lowering drinking age a tragic idea

Kevin Blaum In the Arena

Sunday August 31, 2008 | 08:28 AM


https://www.timesleader.com/opinion/columnists/blaum/Lowering_drinking_age__a_tragic_idea_Kevin_Blaum_In_the_Arena_08-31-2008.html

An ill-conceived idea supported by more than 120 college presidents, the “Amethyst Initiative” is a call to lower the drinking age across the country.

You might remember, in 1984, it was Republican President Ronald Reagan and a Democratic Congress that established the national minimum drinking age of 21. This makes it unlawful for anyone younger to attempt to purchase, consume, transport or possess alcoholic beverages. Any state that went below 21 would lose federal highway dollars.

Prior to that, states determined their own drinking ages and those varied from 18-21. What did not vary was the teenage carnage on our roads and highways. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, as teens became more mobile, alcohol was the leading killer of young adults. Last I looked, it still is. In fact, nothing else even comes close.

And so 21 became the law of the land.

In 1987, Pennsylvania strengthened its penalties and suspended driver’s licenses of underage drinkers. It also hiked fines and established prison terms for adults who knowingly sold or furnished alcohol to minors. Automobile fatalities among 16- to 20-year-olds began to decline as the number of suspended licenses rose. The ability to drive became more important than the desire to drink and other states moved to toughen their laws as well.

The national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the University of Michigan and others studied and discovered the value of 21 as the legal age to drink. Not only did the national minimum age keep many kids alive, it also had a positive effect on teen violence.

Yet every school year several college students lose their lives because of alcohol. On campus or off, they fall out of windows, from second-story porches or down steps. They fall asleep at the wheel or in the snow, all because of alcohol. This does not count the number of alcohol-related sexual assaults and other acts of violence committed by and on university students away from home.

These tragedies are usually followed by disturbingly weak comments by university presidents and their press offices that knew or should have known where the drinking was taking place and moved to stop it.

When it comes to alcohol, too many university presidents turn a blind eye to their in loco parentis responsibility and do little to see that college rules and civil laws are vigorously enforced on and off their campuses. When a tragedy occurs off campus, universities are quick to quote line and verse of any statute that might absolve them of responsibility for what happens an inch outside their gates. Technically, for now, they might be correct, but morally they are profoundly responsible and one day a jury will say so.

Why would 129 college presidents want the national drinking age lowered when they know a lower drinking age means alcohol in the hands of more 14-, 15- and 16-year-olds? Over the years my research tells me the answer is money. They do not want to assiduously enforce the rules or drop the dimes necessary to have law enforcement vigorously enforce the law. This, after all, might hurt enrollment.

Yet they face enormous and growing liability as they continue to wink and pretend not to know where last night’s parties were held.
About the Author

Kevin Blaum's column called "In The Arena" appears each Sunday in The Times Leader.
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