Paladin

Issue date: 9/4/08 Section: Opinion

Media Credit: Kallayan Thuch [Click to enlarge]

The merits and effectiveness of lowering the legal drinking age from 21 to 18 were recently brought into question by college officials across the nation who signed a petition to spur debate about the law.

Although they're not advocating an outright change in the law, the 100 college presidents who signed the petition argue that the current legal drinking age drives consumption underground and encourages binge drinking.

The presidents' concerns do not ring hollow, although national statistics have shown that underage drinking has tailed off over the past several years.

Despite the problem decreasing, possibly through measures such as early childhood intervention and education, and the visibility of organizations such as Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD), the fact remains that the problem hasn't been eradicated.

The 2007 Youth Risk Behavior Survey conducted by the Center For Disease Control and Prevention, found that among high school students, during the past 30 days before they took the survey, 45 percent had drank some amount of alcohol, 26 percent binge drank, 11 percent drove after drinking and 29 percent rode with a driver who had been drinking.

The numbers are alarming to say the least. And these are the young people who actually admitted to reckless alcohol abuse.

These telltale numbers are the reality that many of the college presidents who signed the petition to re-examine this issue have to contend with.

We applaud them for initiating a national dialogue because educators, parents, law enforcement and students must collaborate to address this oftentimes life-or-death issue.

Aside from the presidents' good intentions, we beg to differ with lowering the drinking age due to almost every study showing a direct correlation between higher drinking and driving fatalities when younger people are permitted to legally consume alcohol.

Young people at colleges like LBCC and other institutions across the nation are lectured endlessly about the dangers of abusing alcohol, and the message may not resonate with some, but there's a rationale and history behind the warnings.

President Ronald Reagan signed the Uniform Drinking Age Act into law in 1984, which mandated all states to adopt 21 as the legal drinking age.

Prior to Reagan's action, for almost 40 years states set their minimum drinking age laws at their discretion and the results were disastrous. The lack of uniformity in age limits was so bad that in 1983, 16 states voluntarily set their legal drinking age at 21, resulting in lower drinking and driving fatality rates.

It's no mystery why drunk-driving fatalities have fallen 38 percent from 21,113 in 1982 to 12,998 in 2007, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

Curtailing underage drinking is a message we must continue to reinforce.

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