Organization lobbies to lower drinking age from 21 to 18

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. – While most officials on college campuses are looking for ways to stop underage drinking, one organization is taking a slightly \ndifferent approach.\n“Choose Responsibility,” a non-profit group created by John M. McCardell, former president of Middlebury College in Vermont, is proposing the legal drinking age be lowered to 18 in hopes it will lead to a decrease in \nbinge drinking. \nThe organization also wants to implement a licensing program requiring individuals to complete an alcohol education course before being legally able to consume alcohol.\nMcCardell said he created the group to stimulate discussion about the legal drinking age because the current law is not being observed.\n“Our view is that 21 isn’t working,” McCardell said. “It’s pretty hard to argue, as one looks around (college towns), that the law is being observed. What it has done is drive drinking underground, drive it into dark corners and sent it into dark environments.” \nThere are statistics that seem to back up McCardell’s claims. According to studies performed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the proportion of current drinkers that binge is highest among 18- to 20-year-olds, and 90 percent of alcohol consumed by minors is in the form of binge drinking.\n“I think if drinking takes place in public places and out in the open and in the presence of adults, then it’s less likely to be drinking that causes harm or puts anybody at risk,” McCardell said. \nMcCardell said that the legal drinking age was 18 until 1984, when Congress passed the Uniform Drinking Age Act. He said 18-year-olds should be considered adults.\n“Young adults need to be treated like adults because the law says they are,” \nhe said. \nOther experts, however, \ndisagree. \nAaron M. White, an assistant professor at Duke University and one of the creators of AlcholEdu, said times have changed since 1984.\n“I’m all for giving people rights,” he said. “Until cultural changes occur, it would be disastrous to lower the drinking age. It would accomplish nothing; it would only make the problem worse.”\nWhite said as life expectancy has increased, so has the period of adolescence. \n“Fifty years ago an 18-year-old really was on the cuffs of young adulthood,” he said. “Eighteen-year-olds in modern America no longer represent that threshold of young adulthood.” \nWhite said changes need to be made across the country before the drinking age is lowered. \n“By and large, American college students haven’t demonstrated that they can handle that responsibility at 18,” he said.\nThe National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimates 22,796 lives of 18- to 20-year-olds have been saved since 1975, around the time states began to raise the legal drinking age to 21.