the drinking age

The recent discussion about the drinking age seems like decent enough blogging fodder. Especially because I haven't written anything in awhile.

The debate about the drinking age skirts the real issue of the futility of attempting to legislate a societal fixture. As anyone who's been to college can tell you, the notion that the drinking age plays any significant role in alcohol availability is silly. A student with a brain and a friend can drink when and where he or she wants regardless of his or her age. However, the fact that so much campus drinking is illegal under current legislation makes it impossible for college administrations to handle the issue with responsibility or realistic policy - condoning lawbreaking sends a less-than-inviting message to parents with a fistful of tuition dollars. Colleges are acutely aware of the importance of the issue and inundate freshmen with garbage like AlcoholEdu, now a mandatory aspect of most any Introduction to University Life course. The target audience of such programs is unknown to me. For anyone who does not yet know the risks of drinking upon entering college, trying to convince them of such is like trying to convince your old racist great aunt that Obama isn't a Muslim. If mandating such programs is enough to garner an insurance break for colleges, fine, but we need to stop pretending that it's getting to the heart of the problem.

Lowering the drinking age to 18 would have a positive effect in fostering the concept of drinking as an issue to be addressed instead of a crime to be punished. During my time at the University of Dayton, they had a program once a semester called "How Much Do UDrink?" which purported to offer students a chance to received unbiased and non-judgmental feedback on their drinking with regard to their health and academic careers. Such an initiative was welcome in the face of all the "alcohol is evil" indoctrination that most college students will be used to.

The drinking age does next to nothing in keeping booze out of the hands of college students. And allowing 18-year-olds to purchase alcohol would let them consume responsibly in a bar or restaurant instead of buying a handle from an upperclassman and putting it away in short order. In addition, it would remove some of the mystique of alcohol use and no doubt blunt the impulse to get blackout drunk as soon as one sets foot in a dorm.

Such an idea is not without its pitfalls. Of primary concern is the fact that lowering the drinking age to 18 would make booze far more accessible to high schoolers. Early studies have shown that the popularity of seniors would roughly triple. I'm as progressive as they come, but the prospect of rosy-cheeked and newly-driver's-licensed sophomores driving home with a few beers in their system is worrying enough as is. To make the age of consumption 18 would be to eliminate an obstacle in the way of that happening. Of course there are always older siblings and fake IDs, but opening up alcohol purchasing to a full quarter of a high school class is going to have some effects on availability.

Therefore, let's make the drinking age 19. This is the quick-and-dirty solution. I'd love to suggest something like requiring a high school diploma (perhaps denoted on a driver's license or something) for 18-year-olds to buy alcohol, so as to assuage the common complaint of "I'm old enough to serve my country, etc." But that's probably too ambitious and costly for serious consideration. So 19 is the right answer. Low increase in availability to high school students, and opportunities for college students to drink responsibly (like they are anyway). The notion that people are going to wait to turn 21 is one of the silliest suppositions in society - it's time to tweak the law to be in line with reality.