Presidents encourage drinking debates

Last week the Associated Press began running a story about a movement called the Amethyst Initiative. Since then, thousands of newspapers, television stations and radio broadcasts have picked up the story, causing a national debate about the current drinking age. But the debate has just begun, and that’s just what the Amethyst Initiative wants.

Started in July, the Amethyst Initiative is a group of administrators from 128 U.S. universities who believe that current laws regarding alcohol consumption aren’t working. The movement is pushing for lawmakers and the general public to consider the laws currently in place and whether they’re working.

The list of administrators who have signed on to the initiative includes presidents from such prestigious universities as Duke University, Dartmouth College and Johns Hopkins University, among others.

According to the initiative’s web site, “The Amethyst Initiative supports informed and unimpeded debate on the 21 year-old drinking age. Amethyst Initiative presidents and chancellors call upon elected officials to weigh all the consequences of current alcohol policies and to invite new ideas on how best to prepare young adults to make responsible decisions about alcohol use.”

In the Associated Press story, some presidents who signed on to the initiative explained that they felt having a 21-year-old drinking age contributed to and encouraged binge drinking and want the drinking age lowered to 18.

But can a law really contribute to and encourage the very behavior it is meant to deter? No. Binge drinking is often seen as a method of showing off ones ability to consume large amounts of alcohol. Not as a form of rebellion against a law.

Perhaps what really needs to happen is to make the true effects of drinking more visible and the positive effects less visible?

Why don’t we take a lesson from the 1970s? Up until 1971, the main form of advertising for tobacco companies was through television commercials. In the late 1960s, anti-tobacco groups began to complain that cigarette ads on TV were making smoking seem attractive to young viewers and influencing kids to smoke.

In response, Congress passed a ban in 1969 that prevented cigarette advertising on television. Statistics showed that the number of young smokers declined rapidly after 1971 when the tobacco ads stopped running.

Today, young people are still influenced by TV advertising. So every time a Budweiser, Heineken or Absolut Vodka ad comes on, the chances of a young person seeing that ad are high.

If cutting TV tobacco ads was effective in cutting down on young smokers, then couldn’t cutting TV alcohol ads have a similar effect?

John McCardell, the man who formed the initiative and a former president at Middlebury College, said in the AP story that, “It is a law that the people at whom it is directed believe is unjust and unfair and discriminatory.”

Well, Mr. McCardell, too bad. There are plenty of other laws that people feel are unjust, unfair and discriminatory. I guess it must be unfair and unjust to punish a kleptomaniac for stealing since he has an impulse he can’t control. Maybe we should have a national debate about that.

Mothers Against Drunk Driving jumped into the debate as well. The national president of the organization, Laura Dean-Mooney, cautioned parents to consider the safety of students at the colleges whose administrators signed the initiative.

“It’s very clear the 21-year-old drinking age will not be enforced at those campuses,” she said in an interview with the AP.

Perhaps one of the most important topics of the debate was what will happen if the drinking is lowered to 18. High school principals quickly pointed out that if the drinking age is lowered, the age of underage consumers will also lower. This means that underage drinking will leave college campuses and end up a high school problem.

Many saw the initiative as a way to pass the buck from college presidents to high school administrators.

MADD also said in the AP article that lowering the drinking age will lead to a higher number of fatal, alcohol-related car accidents. Statistics show that teenagers are already more unsafe at driving than other age groups. Add to that the problem of someone who’s been drinking and may not be mature enough to make the right decisions and you’ve got a recipe for disaster.

Whether the debate continues or not will depend on how much time the public wishes to spend on the topic and whether the media continues to cover the initiative and its actions.

Still, the initiative attained its goal of creating a national debate—at least for now. I would be glad to see the whole idea go away. We have more important things to debate about that how old someone should be to drink. Say, for example, gasoline prices, the economic recession, the upcoming election, healthcare costs—just to name a few.

And speaking of more important things to debate about—perhaps these university presidents should spend less time signing on to pointless initiatives and more time figuring out how make their universities more affordable. That would certainly be a national debate I’d be interested in.