Lowering age ignores issue

There are groups with which the prudent avoid trifling: authorities in Beijing and Pyongyang, the bulls in Pamplona and members of the organized effort to keep alcohol from the lips of those 18 to 20. Hell’s fury wilts when staring head-on at the scorn of Mothers Against Drunk Driving. But some are undaunted.

Hardly known for daring, some college presidents are ostensibly so on the subject of the minimum drinking age. The current threshold of 21 was compelled by federal arm wrenching in 1984, when Congress threatened to reduce highway money to states that refused to hop to. The aim, championed by MADD and others, was to prevent young people from killing themselves on U.S. highways. Who could argue? Well, few have. Until now.

Dartmouth’s James E. Wright, Duke’s Richard Brodhead and Washington and Lee’s Kenneth P. Ruscio are among more than 100 college presidents who have signed the Amethyst Initiative, which calls on lawmakers to consider lowering the drinking age from 21 to 18. Virginia’s John T. Casteen III is not among the signatories.

Led by Middlebury College history professor and former school president John McCardell, Amethyst charges that “the 21-year-old drinking age is not working” and has helped foster binge drinking on campus. Students driven by the law to imbibe in secret are swept into what school presidents call a counterculture where the lines of sensibility are blurred. Lowering the age, they say, would eradicate that phenomenon.

Not all agree, of course. There is the niggling matter of the numbers. Since 1984, when states began raising the drinking age at the behest of Congress, the number of drunk drivers 16 to 20 killed annually has been cut in half, from 1,600 to 800. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration says the higher age saves roughly 900 lives annually.

MADD and others argue that the push on campus for the lower minimum age is driven by school officials’ desire to flee the problem of prevalent underage drinking generally and binge drinking specifically. This charge and the data are difficult to counter.

But elsewhere, America’s drinking age is a topic of amusement. The legal age throughout much of Europe is 16. The driving age in most European countries is 18. The alcohol restrictions are tighter and the penalties tougher. Comparing fatality statistics from the continent to U.S. figures is difficult, but in many countries, vehicular deaths related to alcohol are higher among drivers 20 to 24 than those 18 to 20. In other words, drinking younger does not increase driving risks.

The college presidents who signed the Amethyst Initiative might well be guilty of the cowardice of which they have been accused, seeking to slink away from binge drinking rather than confront it. Still, we agree with their call for reconsideration of the U.S. drinking age, though on different grounds.

Before the federal government intervened, states were at liberty to set legal drinking ages. It is a freedom they should have retained and should now regain. Thus doing so, states should review where to place emphasis in combating the plague of drunk driving among teens. Europe, for once, offers a model worth contemplating.