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.