TheAgitator.com
Some Good News
Sunday, March 9th, 2008Several states are considering a return to a more sensible drinking age:
More than two decades after the U.S. set the national drinking age at 21, a movement is gaining traction to revisit the issue and consider allowing Americans as young as 18 to legally consume alcohol.
Serious discussions already are under way in several states.
In Vermont, the Legislature has formed a task force that will study whether the drinking age should be lowered.
In South Dakota, a petition is circulating that would ask the state to allow 19- and 20-year-olds to legally buy beer no stronger than 3.2 percent alcohol, while in Missouri a group is attempting to collect the 100,000 signatures needed to get a measure on the November ballot to lower the state’s drinking age to 18.
And in South Carolina and Wisconsin, lawmakers have proposed that active-duty military personnel younger than 21 be allowed to buy alcohol, a move similar to one that was rejected last year in New Hampshire.
“What we’re beginning to see are the early indications that the public is at least ready to consider re-examining this issue,” said John McCardell, a former Vermont college president who runs Choose Responsibility, a non-profit group that advocates alcohol education for young adults and favors lowering the drinking age to 18.
The article contains a predictably hyperbolic reaction from MADD, including the obligatory…
“If you lower the drinking age, people are going to die,” said Jeffrey Levy, a member of MADD’s national board of directors whose son died in an alcohol-related crash.
[...]
Yet Levy, whose son died in a car crash while drinking underage, does not believe that taking the taboo out of alcohol will make teenagers responsible while using it.
“There are those who say that you have to get to the point where young people can drink in moderation,” he said. “But that defies the reality of the college experience. The suggestion that kids drink because it’s against the law is ludicrous. They drink because it’s the culture on college campuses, because there are so often no consequences and because there is alcohol everywhere.”
MADD reps often note that they got into the organization after a family member was killed in some sort of alcohol-related accident. I don’t mean to denigrate their loss, but it’s too often used as a ploy to put the other side at an immediate disadvantage. The problem is, if you press, the circumstances of the accident not only don’t support their position, they often argue against it. I’ve had a few debates with MADD reps over the .08 standard who start by giving their story about a loved one killed or maimed by a drunk driver. But when I’ved ask them what the BAC of the drunk driver was, it’s inevitably some ridiculous figure like .18.
Same thing applies here. I’m sorry for Levy’s loss. But how is his son’s death relevant, here? If he “died in a car crash while drinking underage,” that suggests at minimum that the 21 drinking age didn’t prevent his death. And it doesn’t at all diminish the argument that the national drinking age actually encourages irresponsible consumption among teens by pushing alcohol use behind closed doors.
My piece on the drinking age here.
I fear the problem is not the drinking age, but rather our land use policy and driving habits. The state has since before WWII been pushing for the adoption of the automobile, strangling any change of private entrepreneurship in any other sort of transport (zoning laws keep densities too low for profitable rail, and the already-existing state-supported network of roads puts you at a huge disadvantage if you want to start some sort of transit-oriented firm). And then there’s the intense regulation of the taxi/jitney/shuttle bus industry, which kills any chance of cheap cabs waiting to take bar patrons home. Simply put, in a lot of areas, you really have no choice but to drive to the bar. And no amount of liberalization of our alcohol laws is going to change that.
A crash course on MADD.
http://www.alcoholfacts.org/CrashCourseOnMADD.html
As my father and grandfather (both ex-marines) used to say: “If you can die for your country at 18, you sure as shit should be able to have a damn beer!”
Heck, you know, it would make more sense, if you want to reduce drunk driving incidents in young drivers, to lower the drinking age to 15 or 16 and raise the driving permit age to 18. Let them get it out of their system before they get legal control of a 2-3 ton missile.
Though the problem with this is as Stephen above highlights: the lack of reasonable alternatives to the personal automobile.
It would be interesting to see how their arguments hold up if you compare stats to Canada, where for the most part the drinking age is 18 (in BC it is 19)
” ‘If you lower the drinking age, people are going to die’ said Jeffrey Levy, a member of MADD’s national board of directors whose son died in an alcohol-related crash.”
If you raise the drinking age, people are going to die. If you eliminate the drinking age, people are going to die. If you keep it the same, people are going to die.
Funny how that works.
Lowering the drinking age, along with raising the persumed level of intoxication back to .12, would at least be a start to get the war on moderate drinking out of the way. Since the DUI MADD-NESS that was started 25 years ago (out of a good cause), it has now gotten to be a pathetic display of elf-righteousness of those who feel victimized by a tragic death. Any death in an automobile is tragic whether the driver was sober, drunk, tired, on perscription medication or any other distraction. Trying to get vengenace on people who may hurt someone on the off-chance is not working very weel.
I agree with the others, you used to have bars in neighborhoods where one could walk, but now try to find a place where you can walk to a bar is few and far between. Maybe near a big city (ala Washington DC), Old Towne VA, or Bethesda MD but most places means driving. People are going to drink: to be social, relax or whatever and demonizing it by arresting over 1.5 million people a year is not the way to do it. IMHO
The drinking age in Canada is 19 except for Alberta, Manitoba and Quebec. I personally like the age at 19 because it keeps high schoolers out of the bars, but I do recognize that 18 is a more logical choice.
Don’t forget Minnesota.
http://www.kare11.com/news/ts_article.aspx?storyid=500897
My retort to MADD - people are going to continue to die if the drinking age remains 21.
I have observed the following at a local college. In the old days, drinking was done in the fraternity house, or dorm, or at the college, and driving drunk, while it happened, was the exception not the rule.
Now, students go off campus to drink because of its illegality, and drive back drunk. The former exception is now the rule.
I can’t stand the special interest group MADD. They are mostly interested in getting federal and state funds to employ their employees and consultants. They often do this with their projects with the courts, creating ineffective programs that avoid meaningful alcohol abuse treatment, and create more opportunities for probationers to be failed and put in jail, rather than rehabilitated. However, they have created quite the cottage industry and a motivation to govern by crime, rather than by curing social ills.
Middlebury College President Emeritus Dr. John McCardell has formed “Choose Responsibility” which addresses the prohibitionists and puritans of MADD. Two of his quotes “. . . 21 is not working as well as its supporters claim.” and “A law that a vast majority of the affected population is not observing is not a law that should remain unchallenged.” I hope he is successful in reopening the debate on the drinking age.
I like how a lot of MADD advertisements cite the number of DUI arrests as a sign that drunk driving is a problem. If they really feel that way, they should reduce the allowable BAC up to 0.499; that would hugely reduce the number of DUI arrests, would it not?
Another trick the MADD people like to do is categorize as “alcohol related” any accident in which any participant (possibly a passenger or pedestrian) had any measurable BAC, whether or not there was any evidence that alcohol played any sort of causal factor. Again, the real goal is to maximize the appearance of a “problem”, rather than to actually solve anything.
[...] the drinking age: Some Good News by The [...]
Excellent news.
Even if there were more bars within walking/public transport distance of my house, I’m pretty sure I would see an increase in the enforcement of public drunkenness laws. Makes you wonder if it’s not really about safety, but about control.
“The suggestion that kids drink because it’s against the law is ludicrous. They drink because it’s the culture on college campuses, because there are so often no consequences and because there is alcohol everywhere.”
So then having the drinking age set at 21 is failing miserably at preventing college kids from drinking. I’m glad MADD agrees on that point, now how to we go forward and try to solve this problem? I think *raising* the drinking age would be illogical and counterintuitive, so you tell me the problem with lowering it - oh and you can’t say more kids will drink because we already agree its everywhere on college campuses. So go ahead, what’s your reason…
(chir chirp)
“Another trick the MADD people like to do is categorize as “alcohol related” any accident in which any participant (possibly a passenger or pedestrian) had any measurable BAC, whether or not there was any evidence that alcohol played any sort of causal factor. Again, the real goal is to maximize the appearance of a “problem”, rather than to actually solve anything.”
U r one of the few people ive run into that actually know what the term “alcohol related” actually means. Very few do. It isnt MADD who came up with the term. Its the NHTSA that developed it. They created the definition that every state uses. For those want to read (straight from the horses mouth) where the term comes from and what it entails… have a look here:
http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/pdf/nrd-30/NCSA/TSF2005/2005TSF/810_627/810627.htm
Personally I think we will see fewer kids die of alcohol poisoning if we lower the drinking age. When one has to hide to indulge one tends to overindulge and that I believe has led to a lot of needless deaths of kids away from home for the first time.
I had a very similar conversation with a coworker on the smoking bans that are sweeping the nation at the moment. My argument (I’m a non-smoker, not that it matters) was that at the very least, bars should have a choice whether or not to allow smoking. I don’t know many people that attend bars on a regular basis and either don’t smoke themselves or mind smoking.
My coworker blew up and said she was so glad when Ohio passed the ban last year. Her logic was that her grandmother died at 73 after smoking 3 packs a day for a few decades.
My response? Go grandma! you made it that long? But of much more relevance is the question of what this has to do with people willfully smoking. Her grandma had never set foot in a bar in her life, so where is the connection?
The connection is that MADD and the American Cancer Society have shifted the war they are fighting full on against the substances that are related to their own personal experiences with loss. What a horrible way to go about what could be and sometimes still is some excellent work.