Drinker's Ed

Is 21 a good age? Does the state government need to raise taxes to discourage teens from drinking, or should we look to our friends “across the pond” for answers to our decrepit drinking culture? A recent study conducted by the US Surgeon General concluded that 11 million Americans drink underage and 7.2 million of them “binge drink,” or drink 5 or more alcoholic drinks in one sitting (Pifer).
Many people say that waiting to let people drink until they are 21 saves lives. The supporters of the law also claim that if humans start drinking too early in their lives then their brains don't develop right. These statements are pure nonsense. The study that says the higher drinking age is saving lives doesn't exist on paper and can't be backed up by any statistical data. The idea that alcohol is stopping our minds from growing can't be backed up either.
The only real problem with teens drinking is not that they are drinking so young, the real problem is because they doing it against state laws. Not only is drinking underage getting teens in trouble with the law but it is also causing binge drinking. Many kids binge drink every weekend in America. Binge drinking happens because people want to drink as much as they can before they get caught. According to the federal government’s National Survey on Drug Use and Health 85 percent of 20 year olds admitted to drinking, and two out of five of them said they had binged (Johnson).
The National Minimum Drinking Age Act of 1984 states that revenue will be withheld from states that allow the purchase of alcohol to anyone under the age of 21(MADD). In 1984 Mothers Against Drunk Driving pressured congress into basically blackmailing all 50 states to raise the drinking age to 21 or the states’ highway funding would be taken away. Kind of makes MADD seem like the bad guys doesn’t it? Well, they very well might be. Ever since the drinking age went up, binge drinking has been on the rise and more and more teens are taking visits to the hospital for alcohol poisoning.
MADD says ever since the raising of the legal age much fewer lives have been taken in car accidents because of drinking. That may be true, but what most people don’t realize is that the decade at which the drinking age was raised, the 1980’s, saw some of the biggest leaps in automobile safety. Air bags, shoulder seat belts, and better car designs were all not seen until the mid 80’s, and we know that all of those save lives there is no proof that it was the drinking age.
Hundreds of thousands of college students all over the United States get sent to hospitals each year for alcohol related issues. This massive number of hospital visits due to alcohol is embarrassing to America; these numbers shows just how immature Americans are with alcohol. These kinds of numbers don’t exist in European countries. According to statistics from McGill University, which is located in Montreal where the drinking age is 18, “with 20,000 undergrads they reported only 12 emergencies in the 2002-03 academic year”(Guenther). This minute percentage of students going go to the hospital in unheard of in the US, but it’s normal for most other countries. In the same article the writer gives statistics from two very respectable colleges; for instance Dartmouth College, with 4,400 undergraduates, admits on average about 200 alcohol emergencies a year to their campus health center, and Middlebury, with 2,300 students, averages about 100. What is the main difference between these two schools and the one in Canada? Canada has a much lower average drinking age.
When it comes to alcohol countries with a lower drinking age are much more mature and educated than Americans for just one reason: it’s part of they’re culture. Unlike other countries, America has made alcohol almost a “forbidden fruit.” This has driven many kids to think of alcohol as something that it isn’t. Alcohol shouldn’t be put on this pedestal as it is in America. This type of thinking that alcohol is glorious and should be consumed in large amounts is only held by American teens.
State legislatures need to do something about this binge-drinking phenomenon in this country. They need to step up and take action. Instead, all states are doing is driving underage drinking more behind locked doors. Here in South Carolina, police have created an almost S.W.A.T. team, SLED, to take down under age drinkers. Is that really needed? Most people think not. In the time that the police are devoting to catching college students they could be catching “real” criminals, which just shows how every year there are more kids that have to get their stomachs pumped. Police and parents are driving these kids underground; it seems like this is the worse possible thing to do with underage drinking.
Lowering the drinking age altogether would not be the best idea. Americans are not ready to be giving that much responsibility with drinking. Lowering the drinking age might be better than doing nothing, but it also might be a lot worse. Kids would eventually learn to deal with the responsibilities of drinking but not without many consequences beforehand.
What America and all the states need is an education system to teach teenagers about alcohol. Right now all the education people get is mainly from friends. The only real education that is being given is given only because of court orders, be it either DUI or underage possession. These education classes are only given after an offence. So maybe we should all walk around with open containers on the streets and then we can finally get real education to the people that really need it, like the thousands of kids who go to hospitals each year. There might be another way though, John McCardell’s way.
McCardell is the former president of Middlebury College and founder of the nonprofit group Choose Responsibility. In this semi-middle position McCardell believes that decriminalizing drinking for teens 18 and older will “bring alcohol consumption out from hiding to where parents and adults can monitor it and teach responsibility without conflict” (Baldauf). He wants to set up an education program, similar to drivers ed, to educate young adults on alcohol and its affects. After completing this “drinker’s ed” class a teenager of the age of 18 will be able to purchase a “permit to drink.” This permit would have rules that the kid would have to follow; just like if you get caught speeding with a drivers permit, you will lose all privileges. But instead of waiting a year or two to get privileges back the offender will have to wait until he or she is 21.
Professor Ruth C. Engs of Indiana University may have another way America could decrease binge-drinking. Engs believes that allowing 18 or 19 year olds and up to drink in “controlled environments such as restaurants, taverns, pubs and official school and university functions” would stop teens from drinking in private in excess (Engs). This idea takes away all the reason to “pregaming”, and would undoubtedly lower hospital visits. Professor Engs’ idea is good, but the fact of the matter is that America needs an alcohol education program. Engs’s idea leaves the fate of drinker’s decisions up to society and bar owners. Whereas McCardell has a solid plan that has more regulations and fail safes just in case someone breaks the rules.
The worse thing officials could do is sit back and do nothing. Alcohol is nothing special and needs to be embraced, and does not need to be an everyday crime or hospital emergency. States need to step up and do something instead of going after kids for drinking and indirectly encouraging drinking behind locked doors. This education system is by far the best idea anyone has come up with to solve the problem of underage drinking. This education system doesn’t have to last forever. Eventually we might be able to lower the drinking age entirely, but not until more people become more mature and knowledgeable about alcohol.

(Exploratory Essay) Drinking Age Damage

Ignorance of alcohol takes thousands of teen lives each year. The current laws aren’t preventing deaths, and something needs to be done. Is 21 a good age? Does the government need to raise taxes to discourage teens from drinking, or should we look to our friends “across the pond” for answers to our decrepit drinking culture? A recent study conducted by the US Surgeon General concluded that 11 million Americans drink underage and 7.2 million of them “binge drink,” or drink 5 or more alcoholic drinks in one sitting (Pifer). That statistic alone should scare people into wanting to do something.

In 1984 the Mothers Against Drunk Driving organization pressured congress to persuade “states into hiking the minimum drinking age to 21 by passing a law that tied compliance to the distribution of federal-aid highway funds”(Seaman). Many people stand strong to the belief that this is the best thing that has happened to mold popular American culture. According to Carroll’s article, "Most Americans,” a survey carried out in 2007 by the Gallup Poll News Service conducted a poll of 1,001 telephone-interviewed Americans to see if they opposed or supported lowering the legal drinking age to 18. The results showed that only 22 percent of those interviewed supported lowering the drinking age, 77 percent were against lowering, and 1 percent was neutral to the issue. It seems like a lot of people feel like the current laws don’t need to be changed.

These supporters base their position on statistics that show less lives are being taken by alcohol related driving accidents. There are two major problems to these statistics. The first is that no one knows where these statistics came from or if they are true. If they are true, then this brings up the next problem; these statistics show that this decrease in alcohol-related driving deaths started to occur in the 80’s. This doesn’t seem too much like a problem with the statistics until someone thinks about when the major advances in automobile safety came about, like shoulder seatbelts and airbags, and how it happens to be right around the same time. This is no coincidence there is facts that seatbelt save lives by retaining a human in a seat, there are facts that airbags help cushion impacts, but there are no true facts that a higher drinking age is saving lives in automobile crashes.

This idea of hiking up the drinking age to save the lives of many young Americans is very simple and good, theoretically. 15-17 year olds are less likely to get drunk if 18 year olds aren’t able to buy the alcohol. It is a good theory, but it seems like more and more kids are getting drunk in they’re early teens. Many kids binge drink every weekend in America. Binge drinking happens because people want to drink as much as they can before an authority catches them. In an article titled “communities can impact alcohol use" in Nation’s Health, the writer suggests raising taxes to discourage young underage drinkers from buying alcohol. This is a great way of keeping the drinking age up while still doing something about underage drinking, which usually leads to bingeing, an bingeing is the real problem with underage drinking. The raising of the taxes is a good idea, but it would never work because people who could legally drink would buy a lot less. People buying less means companies would be making far less money, and alcohol companies are very powerful and wouldn’t let that happen.

So what is the answer to binge drinking? It seems the only real way to break this culture of teen binging is to take some advice from the Europeans. European nations have let their children drink from very young ages and none of the people are hurting their brain development, like the people against the lowering of the drinking age says drinking does to young minds.

This argument is one of the main weapons used by the supporters of lowering the drinking age. Binge drinking is happening more and more in American youth and it is putting kids into the hospital at an alarming rate. According to the federal government’s National Survey on Drug Use and Health, 85 percent of 20 year olds admitted to drinking, and two out of five of them said they had binged (Johnson). Something needs to be done, and lowering the drinking age might be the way to change this mentality of “we need to drink as much as possible to go out because we can’t drink there” attitude, at least in 18 year olds.

“Won’t college kids all over the country just go ‘crazy’ if this law is passed?” That is the question in everyone’s mind when people say that it is a good idea to lower the drinking age to 18. College and universities through out America would be a little less sober in the beginning but the general idea is that if you have made it to college, you’re smart enough to be making good decisions.

The problem with lowering the drinking age all at once is many people are not educated on alcohol until it is too late and they have driven drunk or have been in possession underage. With education classes we can get more responsible teens out there. Once they have taken this class they can earn a permit to buy and consume alcohol. This is what John McCardell has imagined to change they way American drinking culture has been for almost 25 years.

McCardell is the former president of Middlebury College and founder of the nonprofit group Choose Responsibility. In this semi-middle position, McCardell believes that decriminalizing drinking for teens 18 and older will “bring alcohol consumption out from hiding to where parents and adults can monitor it and teach responsibility without conflict,” says McCardell (Baldauf). He wants to set up an education program, similar to drivers ed, to educate young adults on alcohol and it’s affects. After completing this “drinker’s ed” class a teenager of the age of 18 will be able to purchase a “permit to drink.” This permit would have rules that the kid would have to follow or, as if you get caught speeding with a drivers permit, you will lose all privileges. But instead of waiting a year or two to get privileges back, a person will have to wait until they turned 21. This is a revolutionary idea that has the support of many Americans, including Kenyon College President S. Georgia Nugent, who lost a student due to alcohol poisoning, and a former Time magazine editor and higher ed reporter Barrett Seaman (Balko).

Another compromise position is taken by Professor Ruth C. Engs of Indiana University. Engs believes that allowing 18 or 19 year olds and up to drink in “controlled environments such as restaurants, taverns, pubs and official school and university functions” would stop teens from drinking in private in excess (Engs). This idea takes away all the reason for “pregaming”, or drinking before you go out and drink more, and would undoubtedly lower hospital visits due to alcohol poisoning.

College students need to stop being treated immaturely when it come to alcohol. If you treat someone like they are immature you should expect an immature response. “Why is an 18-year-old mature enough to marry, to sign a contract, to vote and to fight and die for his country, but not mature enough to decide whether or not to have a beer?” (Balko). Whatever the solution might be, it needs to be done soon before many more students are sent to the hospital or, even worse die.

Annotated Bibliography

Baldauf, Sarah. "SETTING THE BAR AT 18." U.S. News & World Report 142.14 23 Apr. 2007: 28-28.

John McCardell, the former president of Middlebucy College, tries to explain why and how the legal drinking age should be changed from 21 back to 18. McCardell brings the issue to our attention of how the high age limit is meant to keep people safe, but the age limit is just making it worse and causing people to binge drinking. McCardell doesn’t want to lower the drinking age to 18 to encourage underage drinking, he just wants a way to educate so the kids can earn a right. This article is important to my project because McCardell actually provides a way of dealing with this problem in a responsible fashion.


Balko, Radley. "Back to 18?." Reason online. 12 Apr. 2007. Reason magazine. 21 Oct 2007 http://www.reason.com/news/show/119618.html.

Balko’s article offers data collected about the human brain. The affect that alcohol has on a child’s brain is one thing that the supporters for the 21 drinking age uses. Balko tells us that in Europe where the legal drinking age is much lower their kids do much better on standardized testing. This article will be useful because it show all of the misinterpretations that supporters of the existing law uses.

"Big Government, Small Results." Atlantic Monthly 300.3 (Oct. 2007): 30-30.

This article discusses the findings that the research in 1984 showed about how the higher age limit helped save copious amounts of lives. The new findings show that it slowly started increasing and the research was compiled inaccurately. This article is going to be useful to me because it goes against one the main reasons for keeping the legal age where it is.

Carroll, Joseph. "Most Americans Oppose Lowering Legal Drinking Age to 18 Nationwide: Six in 10 Americans support stricter penalties for underage drinking." Gallup Poll Briefing 27 July 2007: 4-7.

Carroll informs us of the fact that most of America is against lowering the legal drinking age to 18. Carroll gives all the reasons why these 6 out of every 10 people are opposed to the idea of lowering the legal drinking age. This gives me more ideas to include in the section of my essay about why it might be a good thing to keep the high drinking age.



"Communities can impact alcohol use." Nation's Health 37.5 (June 2007): 10-10.

This article suggests that raising the tax on alcohol could do more for preventing deaths in automobiles than the high drinking age. This article states the facts about the higher tax before the high drinking age, which is one fact that really supports lowering the drinking age.

Engs, Ruth C.. "Why the drinking age should be lowered: An opinion based upon research." Indiana University. 20 March 1998. English department at Indiana University. 21 Oct 2007 http://www.indiana.edu/~engs/articles/cqoped.html.

Engs provides one unique way of changing the legal age at which someone can consume alcohol. She suggests that the drinking age should be lowered to 18 only in controlled environments such as “restaurants, taverns, pubs and official school and university functions.” She tells us how since the drinking age was raised; in the first year more people reported vomiting due to binge drinking. This article has statistics that I can use to further one point I’m trying to make in my essay.

Frantz, Jeff. "Europeans Learn Responsible Drinking." Alcohol Problems and Solutions. 2 Feb. 2004. State University of New York. 22 Oct 2007 http://www2.potsdam.edu/hansondj/YouthIssues/1077563832.html.

Frantz remind us about what happens in America when young adults turn 21, we go to the bar and get so drunk we get sick. This is not the case that happens in Europe, they are already desensitized to alcohol so when they turn 18 or 16, depending on the country, they don’t go “crazy” and end up sick or in the hospital. This article is important because it tries to prove that America needs to “demystify” alcohol.

Guenther, Scott, et al. "One benefit to a lower drinking age: fewer alcohol emergencies." Christian Science Monitor 98.41 25 (Jan. 2006): 8-8.

This article is a response to another article that tried to say that there is no benefit to lowering the drinking age. This article gives very interesting statistics about America’s Ivy League schools compared to a very large European school, which is very useful for me. Guenther is trying to prove a point about how many more students go to the hospital in America for alcohol than Europeans.


Johnson, Alex. "Debate on lower drinking age bubbling up." msnbc. 14 Aug. 2007. 21 Oct 2007 http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20249460/.

Johnson enlightens us on how a new rising in trying to change the legal age is starting to take hold of small communities all over America. Johnson adds in his article about that the legal drinking age isn’t a federal law but merely states being pressured by the federal system. This article would help my project out because it give me different statistics for each state. These statistics are very interesting because the statistics tell us there are loop holes in these state laws, this will be good to include in my essay.

MADD. 2007. Mothers Against Drunk Driving. 21 Oct. 2007 http://www.madd.org/

This website offers the opposite point of view on the lowering of the legal drinking age. The MADD organization is the group the pressured congress into enacting the drinking age to be 21. On their website it give statistics, medical background, and history of this battle. This will be useful to my project because of how bias they are toward keeping this restriction. This will help me get a whole point of view about this issue. This website will also give me the opposition’s history to this topic.

Seaman, Barrett. "How Bingeing Became the New College Sport." Time 166.9 (29 Aug. 2005): 80-80.

Seaman offers us an explanation about how binge drinking has taken over many American college campuses. Seaman tells us about how it used to be back in his college days, they would drink a lot but not enough to hospitalize themselves, which is what is happening all over the country. This article gives me the explanation about when and who influenced the change in the legal drinking age, which is crucial to the understanding of this issue.