As many of you may know, I have been very active in the alumni association of my alma mater, Williams College, currently serving on the Society of Alumni’s executive committee. Whenever we discuss the problems of drinking on campus and ways to promote responsible consumption of alcohol, we learn how the drinking age hamstrings the college, making it difficult to develop a sensible policy.
Such discussion have been ongoing at least since I was an undergraduate.
Rather than discouraging the irrational consumption of alcohol, the drinking age actually promotes it. It turns the types of beverages human beings have been drinking in ritual celebrations as well as social gatherings for as long as we have recorded our history into a kind of forbidden fruit.
Euripides records how the prissy Pentheus was punished for failing to honor Dionysus, the Olympian whose bailiwick included wine (among other things).
When people see wine, beer and other (potentially) intoxicating spirits as beverages to enjoy with their elders, rather than those to consume on the sly, they will be more likely to drink responsibly, particularly by learning about drinking from those who have been drinking responsibly for a generation (at least). If you start drinking among a group of adolescents, the age at which we are the most irresponsible, you will likely drink more irresponsibly as you’ll be drinking among those with the least capacity to control their actions and with a spirit inclined to excess.
Studying in Germany, I saw many of my Teutonic peers drinking on regularly basis, yet encountered none of the binge drinking I had observed on American campuses. They grew up drinking beer. They did not see consumption of their national beverage as something to do just with your peers, but also as an activity to enjoy with your parents–and their peers as well.
In a piece for the Wall Street Journal essay that he links on his blog, Glenn Reynolds addresses this very topic, where he reminds us that
. . . over 130 college presidents, as part of something called the Amethyst Initiative, have called for an end to the drinking age of 21. They note that the higher drinking age doesn’t stop college students from drinking, as anyone who’s been on a college campus in the past several decades knows. It does drive drinking out of bars and restaurants and into dorm rooms and fraternity houses, where there is less supervision from the non-intoxicated and less encouragement for moderation.
Emphasis added. As the blogfather himself would say, read the whole thing.
If there were no drinking age, students could meet a professor at a pub to enjoy a beer and discuss the importance of alcohol to ancient ritual or merely to unwind together and talk about campus life. In short without a drinking age, college officials could more regularly integrate drinking into campus life.
Unless you are prepared to go the China/Singapore route (i.e. death penalty for all offenses), banning a problem will generally complicate efforts to solve it, because it lumps minor offenders / victimless crimes in with the serious incidents. For example, banning gays in the military complicated efforts to rationally identify and remove sexual harassers (gay or straight).
If IIRC, this was one of the broader overreaches of the 80’s (If you don’t raise your drinking age, then we don’t give you federal funds).
The states should be able to set their drinking age. Just remember that if you go out of state to school 🙂
I think it was Wisconsin that had the very sensible law that let minors consume alcohol as long as their parents were present. That is a much more sensible approach. Look, if a Mormon like me thinks the drinking age is stupid, it’s gotta be pretty stupid.
It has always seemed upside down to me that we ask a young person to stop a bullet for the American flag, but will arrest him/her for trying to buy a beer…but then, I guess the Government knows better. At least, that’s what she (read: Nanny State) always tells us!
Germany has a drinking age, as does most of the EU. 16 for beer and wine; 18 for distilled spirits.
Having lived in the heart of a popular destination in Europe for many years, stepping around the Americans lying face down in pools of their own vomit, piss and excrement was a regular Saturday and Sunday morning thing.
It’s a lack of maturity and lack of self-control and we can thank the prudes, prohibitionists and puritans of the conservative end of the spectrum.
Simple solution: If they have a military I.D., serve ’em.
(Yes, it has been a long time.)
It’s a lack of maturity and lack of self-control and we can thank the prudes, prohibitionists and puritans of the conservative end of the spectrum.
All of whom strongly advocate against what you are describing and in fact encourage mature behavior and self-control.
And if you actually knew anything about Europe, Dogma, you would recognize that the reason you don’t see this type of behavior is because what they consider normal and responsible is what idiot gay and lesbian people like you scream is “prude, prohibitionist, and puritan” behavior in the United States.
Funny, isn’t it? You cite Europeans as a model without realizing that what they internalize and support is 180 degrees opposite to your leftist liberal “morality” of binge drinking, promiscuity, and drug use as something to be encouraged.
I believe keeping the drinking age at 21 since an 18 year old, technically an adult, does not possess the emotional maturity & wisdom yet; therefore, he or she is prone to make terrible mistakes which would be difficult recovering. Drinking is one of them. The younger one starts drinking, the more prone they begin to lose control & possibly become alcoholics & get into other drugs.
At 38, I rarely drink alcohol myself.
I believe keeping the drinking age at 21 since an 18 year old, technically an adult, does not possess the emotional maturity & wisdom yet; therefore, he or she is prone to make terrible mistakes which would be difficult recovering.
But they have the wisdom to vote?? And the emotional maturity to volunteer to go into battle for the US (or, heaven forbid, drafted!!). You can’t have it both ways, they are either adults or they are not. Hell, it would be safer to raise the driving age to 21 and reduce the drinking age to 18.
Then neither should 18 year olds engage in voting, sexual activity or military service. They’re roughly equal in the level of responsibility / wisdom needed.
Make the age for those things 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, whatever – but pick one.
I am 100% in agreement that the drinking age should have never been raised, period. It just goes to show our culture has so many contradictions that defy logic. I truly believe our binge drinking culture is directly related to this ridiculous law. You cannot respect a law that makes it illegal to drink a beer. Yet, an 18 year old can enter into a contract and fight in wars. I went to Europe, France specifically, and I didn’t see any of the sloppiness, and bad behavior that I saw in high school and in college. In fact, the mayor of my hometown, his son was killed drinking and driving on prom night.
If anything, parents condone this type of behavior because they set such a poor example themselves. If alcohol wasn’t so taboo, maybe there would be more respectful behavior.
Voting & drinking is not parallel.
They may not be parallel in terms of the physical danger if individual X does it wrong… but they are parallel, in terms of the wisdom needed to do it right. Also, what about military service? Sexual activity?
Um, Dan…. I thought you said we shouldn’t be addressing social issues?
Funny how you keep addressing them!
#ConsistencyFAIL
The stats to compare to are in the province of Alberta, drinking age: 18. It is the most conservative province in Canada, wealthy with petro-dollars, has several large universities and and a large population of young people with disposable cash. If the rate of DUI, suicide, idiocy is the same or lower around drinking issues in Alberta, than you can most likely expect similar results in most US states.
Reverse the drinking and driving ages. Drink at 16. Drive at 21.
You should be sympathetic toward Pentheus. After all, that experience with Dionysus really tore him apart.
Sebastian: Yeah, Voting affects everyone much more directly than drinking does.
So switch them. Drink at 18 or 16, vote at 21.
(18 year olds can form binding contracts, which is more significant than having a beer, isn’t it?
They can join the armed forces.
They can buy firearms (including pistols in private sales, but not from dealers).
But they can’t have a beer, because that’s serious?
Right.)
18 yrs olds can vote, run up credit card debt, sign contracts, live on their own and work, get college loans that could leave them in debt for life, and die for their country in the military, but are not considered mature enough to buy a beer?? Absolutely crazy. This leaves 18 yr olds with all the responsibilities of adulthood, but bars one of the few rewards. Every 18 yr old in the country should make this their single issue vote decider for any politician that asks for their support. And anybody above 21 who claims with a straignt face that this is fair should hang their head in shame.
And BTW, I am not a young person. I am over 50, but I know gross unfairness when I see it.
Drinking before I vote is the only thing that keeps me sane on election day.
@ Sebastian Shaw – Yes, you’re right, most 18 year old does not possess the emotional maturity & wisdom for drinking, but you get that with experience and with a 21 yr old drinking age, the experience you get is that of hiding your drinking and not be able to gain from the experience of your elders, because your elders aren’t aloud to show you responsible behavior related to an adult beverage.
Further a correlation between a younger drinking age and alcoholism is probably because currently when one drinks at a young age, they hide their drinking. I wonder if that correlation is present in a country with a low/no drinking age? I think it is not.
Basically, because of the drinking age, someone under 21 needs to “get their drink on” before they can go out in public and therefore binge drink. By the time they are of legal drinking age, the only ways they’ve been “trained” to drink is to binge and are thus more prone to becoming an alcoholic.
And AE speaks with his ‘father knows best’ attitude
When I was a young man growing up in NYC, the drinking age was 18 and remained 18 while I was in college and went into the military. Never seemed to be a problem then, don’t know why it should be a problem now. And when I was in college at Rutgers in New Jersey, the school allowed drinking by 18yr olds on campus. Kept a lot of kids out of cars and in dorms and frat houses. (And yes, I’m really dating myself now, almost 60.)
My experiences as a teen in Germany make me think the legal age is a problem as well.
I went to church with my exchange family, after Mass the teens hung out at one side of the beergarden, the parents were on the other. Both drank beer. The teens were in control, but had a good time hanging with each other.
Not in America. Here the teens would sneak out, break two or three laws, and their parents have no idea where they are.
If you are an adult you should have the full rights of an adult. The drinking age should be 18. Think of it this way-at age 65-you may no longer legally purchase or consume, transport alcohol or cigarettes in the US.
yeah, Julie is Back
Golly, I lived in Québec for 13 years and my in-laws are European. What a bizzare concept. My kids began drinking wine as soon as they could hold a cup — small quantities, and cut with some water, mind you, but it was a normal accompaniment to dinner, usually with 6 or 10 people around the table chatting in some variants of three or four languages.
The functional legal age in Québec is about 10 or 12. I’m not talking about purchase, but if the family is out at a bistro or nice restaurant and wine is ordered … no one even cares if the parents pour some for the kids. Usually the older kids will share a sip or two with the younger ones, and they all have a fantastic time.
I taught part-time in the Québec university system, and I almost never encountered a drunk student. There were, no doubt, a few, but it was rare.
On multiple occasions in offices and such the 10 AM break might include modest quantities of wine to wash down the cheese, pickled eels or whatever goodies we had. Donuts … not so much.
Read Theodore Dalrymple and you find out that binge drinking in the UK is endemic (and you can see images of this frequently in the UK media).
I think there’s more to it than just the drinking age.
On a trip to the UK a few years ago to a branch office (engineers), it seemed that all social conversation revolved around 1) how drunk I got last weekend and 2) how drunk I will get this weekend.
I’m old enough to have been able to start legally drinking at age 18. In our state (in the US), we could drink low-alcohol beer at 18 and everything else at 21.
It wasn’t too many years after that the 21 year old requirement went into place. The main effect, from my unscientific observation, was that it drove drinking underground and, worse, pushed kids toward drugs, which they could acquire with much greater ease.
Maybe the explosion of drug use then, and its ripples that we see even today, would have happened anyway. But it seemed pretty clear to me at the time that, in trying to push alcohol use away from high school/college age kids, we pushed the kids themselves toward experimenting with things that were entirely out of the public eye and out of our control.
Today’s kids are frightenly efficient at finding ways of getting their highs. They barely even go to dealers anymore…they just use whatever they can get their hands on — out of sight and out of their minds.
I was in Europe for six years.
They begin drinking in a familial setting earlier than we do.
Beer is brewed differently there – it’s like drinking a loaf of bread. It becomes a necessary part of the meal as a carbohydrate, and because of the extremely poor quality of the water, to kill off germs in the gut. Americans enjoy cleaner water, air, and food.
The polizei, gendarmes, and other police forces do not tolerate drunkeness. They prefer drunken American soldiers to their own drunk citizens, or G-d forbid, British Football Fans, sober or sauced. Mouth off to a polizei and he will beat you bloody. If being drunk makes one Superman, that polizei baton is m-ther-f–kin’ kryptonite on steroids.
Alcoholism rates in Europe are greater in Europe than in America. Until Europeans recognized that the single factor holding them back financially was alcoholic workers, Europe regularly lagged behind the US in every area except banking. Bankers are stereotyped as “sober” for a reason.
I’m of the ‘old enough to die for the nation, old enough to drink’ mindset. Comparing America to Europe is fraught with misapplicable metrics. They do binge drink. They do drink socially.
At issue: should the college/university replace the parents in deciding how to instruct young adults to drink? No.
Dream on, the government is doing everything to infantilize us, they won’t give up on this control anytime soon.
Hi Dan,
My rule of thumb is simple: If you are old enough to enlist and die for your country, then you should be old enough to drink in it.
I’ve lived in Germany as well as 3 Scandinavian countries and been a visitor in the Baltics and Russia. They each have their own laws as well as their own social and economic conditions. Binge drinking is not simply a matter of “forbidden fruits.” There is also a component of boredom or desparation that is involved. If people feel to safe, they drink to feel something different, if they feel to supressed they drink to feel something different, and if they aren’t allowed to drink they drink to feel something different. It’s always and escapist distraction. I think it’s okay when it’s done in the name of some other distraction, i.e. a wedding, a birth, a new job, quitting a job, etc. But not as a way to forget other troubles. It has everything to do with responsibility. And as a side not, I believe that those who sign up for military service should be allowed to imbibe… old enough to die for your country, old enough to drink in your country.
Dan, I became of (drinking) age in the transition years. In NJ, I just missed it when the drinking age was raised to 19, and just missed it again when the drinking age was raised to 21. I did make the cutoff in NY to 19, so I was able to drink there legally for two years before I could in NJ.
In general, I do believe that we should be consistent and grant all rights and responsibilities as an adult at 18. I’ve heard many times the slogan “If I’m old enough to go to war, I’m old enough to drink.” I believe that all military personnel can legally buy and consume alcohol, as long as its on a military base. I guess I wasn’t willing to volunteer in the armed services just so I could drink legally.
The reasoning for raising the drinking age back to 21 is that those in the beginning adult years are more likely to drive drunk and otherwise cause more havoc than other adults. If I recall correctly, the statistics have beared that out.
Yes, I get the argument that government shouldn’t be our nanny, and to be consistent. And frankly, I was surprised that it would be the Reagan Administration that steamrolled this, essentially blackmailing state governments out of federal transportation funds for not raising the drinking age to 21. I think it was Louisiana that was the last holdout, and gave in.
Anyway, like it or not, the drinking age is 21 for now. The college presidents aren’t arguing for lowering the age back down to 18 for consistency and libertarian reasons. They are arguing it based on safety reasons, the same reasons the federal government used to strongarm state governments to raise the drinking age. Further, I don’t think that lowering the drinking age back to 18 is going to have all the less negative impact that the presidents intend.
As for myself, I’m wishy-washy on this. I see both sides of the argument. But it seems best to give the states the right to decide without the strongarming from the federal government.
That seems a reasonable position. Now, let me ask you, are you willing to extend it to other areas of public policy? Gay marriage? Health Care? Education standards? Toilet water usage? Environmental regulation? Light bulbs? Natural resource management?
Hey Pat, my experience was the flip side of yours. Maine raised its drinking age from 18 to 21 at just about the time I turned 21 (1985). I seem to recall that people born in 1965 or maybe 1966 had a grace period where they could legally drink as well. Anyhow, I attended college from 1984 through 1988. I was the only person in my quad that was drinking age and was constantly asked by the younger crowd “Jim, can you go to 7-11 and get us some beer?” I usually had to sneak some beer in for my own consumption (thank goodness I was living in a single student room).
I am for intellectual consistency. If an adult can enter into contracts without limit, participate in the democracy, and conduct all other aspects of independent life, then they should be able to buy alcohol as they wish.
Set whatever age is appropriate for the whole package. Maybe it is 18. maybe it is 21, or maybe it should be 25. But it should be consistent.
To say the choice of drinking it “too much” or the person is “not capable enough” to make that choice, also means that they are not capable enough to make other adult choices.
My experience is:
Living in Germany as kids, my brother and I were able to order beer at 12. Don’t know if this was a widespread practice or just one permissive shop owner.
Military personnel can buy beer on base at 18. A more pernicious restriction is the prohibition on consuming alchohol in a Muslim country (where we seem to be spending a lot of time) so soldiers don’t offend the people trying to kill them.
I am old enough to have been around when the drinking age was 18. It wasn’t a big deal. Groups like MADD made it one.
I thnk that excessive drinking in college is less a function of drinking age than the situation of being away from parental control and knowledge.
Having been born in Italy, my parents served my a small goblet of wine with our pasta dinners. When we emigrated during my middle teens they continued the practice, even to the point in an italian restaurant my father would order two glasses of wine, and when the waitress wasn´t around, I sipped. Then the parents of my friend who were from Germany asked permission to glive me a glass of beer to accompany my friend as we atched t.v. after playing. To this day, a good number of years later, I generally consume no more than two of any kind of spirits. I agree that drinking responsibly begins in the home and treating alcoholic beverages as the tree of forbidden fruit makes it more attractive.
I live in a college town along with 2 other universities in 2 bordering towns – it’s common to hear of a student dying from over drinking. When my children entered adulthood at the age of 18 they were allowed to have a drink in my home (beer or wine) and were usually served wine at holiday meals even before they turned 18. I felt it was my responsibility to teach them to drink rationally – before they left home for college. That when drinking with adults it is part of a social event, not an event in and of itself.
What I think the age 21 law does is erodes the parent/child relationship and unfortunately, a lot of parents don’t mind having the role of accountability and responsibility fall at the doorsteps of colleges. However, I think parents miss out on a nice aspect of the development of their child into adulthood. During my daughter’s college years we’d sit on the patio on a summer’s evening sipping wine and chatting… It’s almost like the government wants us to have “dysfunctional” kids…
My dad has said that when he was going to Michigan State, early 50s, if you were caught drinking or drunk, you were immediately expelled and lost any financial aid. Perhaps instead of pussy footing around and capitulating to the students, a school should lay down the law, as it were, and stick to it.
That seems a reasonable position. Now, let me ask you, are you willing to extend it to other areas of public policy? Gay marriage? Health Care? Education standards? Toilet water usage? Environmental regulation? Light bulbs? Natural resource management?
V the K, it seems to me that these things should either be decided by a) the state, or b) the individual.
Same sex marriage should for now, at least, be decided by the states. However, in time, this is probably something that should be uniform, just like we do for different sex marriage. All such marriages are recognized by every state, and I would envision that would happen with same sex marriage. We’ll see.
As for health care, this is a disaster waiting to happen, no matter what we do with it, even if the current health care law is entirely repealed. I have no good answer there.
Jim, I do recall there were a couple of people in my grade that just beat the deadline as well. So they had three years of drinking legally before the rest of us.
“Same sex marriage should for now, at least, be decided by the states. However, in time, this is probably something that should be uniform, just like we do for different sex marriage. All such marriages are recognized by every state, and I would envision that would happen with same sex marriage. We’ll see. ”
How… Libertarian of you Pat. Come to the dark side… we have cookies 🙂
Americans seem to handle booze, drugs and guns about equally. We drink responsibly, stay away from non-prescribed drugs and keep our shooting skills honed and our guns in good condition with the safety on.
Or, we drink to excess, find happiness in drugs and use guns to finance the former.
Then we wonder how to change the “culture” of drinking. Well, perhaps the “culture” of drinking is not much different from the “culture” of libertine excess. If one does not have sufficient personal restraint then the door to libertine excess is open and enticing. It really has nothing to do with a drinking age law or laws against drugs or banning guns.
If you drink to excess, you know you have done so. There is a rotten hangover to remind you. If you seek drugs, you know what is causing the itch. If you pack a gun to “defend” your self esteem, you are still totally responsible for putting bullets in it and pulling the trigger.
Germany has plenty of drunks both young and old. Maybe, just maybe, their students in college are a bit more responsible about the job of getting themselves educated.
College drinking seems to be worse among liberal arts students. Why do you suppose that is the case? Maybe “liberalism” enables irresponsibility.
How… Libertarian of you Pat. Come to the dark side… we have cookies
I don’t know. What kind of cookies. If it’s peanut butter, forget it.
Semi-sweet chocolate chip. Peanut butter cookies are for the starving.