Drinking Age

A group of about 100 college presidents has proposed lowering the drinking age from 21 to 18. Interestingly, they come to this position as a way to lower binge drinking on college campuses. Their argument is that the clandestine drinking that underage students indulge in is more likely to lead to binge drinking than legal drinking. Naturally, there are others who oppose this idea. Among them, Mother's Against Drunk Driving arguing that alcohol related accidents would increase if the drinking age were lowered. It's certainly a logical enough argument, more people drinking would seem to lead to more drunk drivers; and I'm sure they have statistics to back it up. For me though, it's not enough.

I'm not a drinker. At all. I'm also well over 21 and don't have any kids, so I don't have a real strong emotional connection to this debate. My interest comes from my interest in good public policy. I tend to agree with the college presidents for a couple of reasons, though not the reason they offer. First, I'm very sympathetic to the argument that we, as a society, say that an 18 year-old is mature enough to vote or choose to serve in the military, but not mature enough to handle a beer. That makes absolutely no sense to me. Second, I find the way the current drinking age was implemented to be objectionable. The federal government bullied the states into setting the drinking age to 21 by threatening to withhold highway funds. This was just a sneaky way for the federal government to get around the limits on its power imposed by the Constitution, and I don't like that one bit. If a 21 year-old drinking age is such good policy, then the states should adopt it on their own and on its merits, not because it will cost them huge amounts of federal funds.

So, the question is, do the college presidents have any chance at all of succeeding? Probably not, it's far too easy to demonize their position, but I wish them luck.