College Click TV News: Column Dialogue Needed Over Drinking Age

The Great Debate continues. Not about the still-undeclared war in Iraq, not over the ethics of abortion or same-sex marriages, not even the exact number of votes separating the socialists or the fascists from the presidency.

No, we debate still whether prohibition works and, to a lesser extent, whether individuals should be allowed to decide what enters their body. The question is not whether "hard" drugs like cocaine or heroin should be legalized - though almost daily tragedies from this "war" ought to spark serious discussion - but over the simpler question of whether the drinking age should be lowered.

Even more of a buzz kill, the debate is really over whether college and university presidents and chancellors should sign their and their institutions' support to discussing openly the unintended consequences of a public policy mandating a 21-year old drinking age and to explore possible better alternatives. The answer is a no-brainer to anyone familiar with universities qua bastions of free thought and speech: Resoundingly, yes!

What piqued the ire of pundits across America? The Amethyst Initiative - a group of university presidents and chancellors reinvigorating dialogue on the undeniable ill effects of a 21 policy. John McCardell, professor emeritus of Middlebury College, brought the first group of presidents together in June this summer, when they discovered a shared dislike for the ailing effects of the policy.

McCardell also founded the non-profit Choose Responsibility in 2007 "to promote general public awareness of the dangers of excessive and reckless alcohol consumption by young adults" through research, outreach and education for "young people, their parents and public officials."

The Amethyst Initiative, while explicitly pro-dialogue, does not avoid the realities of the mandated drinking age. The reality is it is not working, and it is killing the most precious resource this world knows - human life.

Critics of the initiative whine that it is merely a way for universities to shuck off liability for alcohol-related deaths and lawsuits. Would they rather we all stick our heads in the sand to avoid our own culpability for the destructive policy by continuing in the same manner in which we have failed since the policy was enacted in the early 1980s?

More enforcement and harsher penalties are not the answer. Zero-tolerance laws are the reductio ad absurdum of the enforcement argument, although lawmakers and social activists seem not to realize the absurdity of trying to eradicate a substance humankind has been coexisting with from time immemorial.

The results are sometimes laughably absurd, such as a high school senior in Virginia who was suspended 10 days and sent to a three-day county substance abuse program for violating his school's zero-tolerance policy on alcohol by using mouthwash on campus.

Zero-tolerance policies have some effects that are not so laughable. The policy induces higher rates of driving under the influence, since otherwise non-imbibing designated drivers will be prosecuted under zero-tolerance laws, anyhow. They also induce underage drinkers to drink away from elders, who might otherwise lend some responsibility and oversight to the scenario, yet are perversely forced to take a zero-knowledge, if not zero-tolerance approach in order to avoid legal culpability, the repercussions of which are increasingly stringent. A corollary to this is more increased driving under the influence.

Abstinence education is not the answer. Mothers Against Drunk Driving should take note from the lack of success of abstinence-only sex education. Implicit in such "education" is that the activity in question is good for one purpose - whatever ill the group decrying the activity finds, brings their cause the most short-term media exposure. In the case of sex education, "sex yields pregnancy" was the facile equation touted across the country. With more forms of contraception available, the content has changed to "sex yields untreatable diseases."

Although both situations are risks associated with sexual activity, neither is a necessary outcome, and both risks can be hedged against with knowledge. But abstinence-only education teaches a Russian-Roulette version of sex, and discourages a responsible, risk-abatement approach in the same way that abstinence-only education in alcohol consumption does.

The primary purpose of alcohol is intoxication, we are told. Rather than learning to drink responsibly in social situations so as to maximize fun while minimizing risks, we learn equivalencies for various state-mandated maximum blood alcohol content levels that simply beg to be conquered.

Critics who would keep the 21-year old drinking limit are blind to the experience of youngsters the world over who are raised in a culture of tolerance regarding alcohol consumption. Tolerance generates responsibility, whereas Washington's holier-than-thou, "thou shall not" approach invites rebellion.

Speaking of the holier-than-thou temperance roots of alcohol prohibition - it is not true. Donald Boudreaux reports in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review that politicians were not motivated by goodwill and piety to outlaw alcohol, but by expediencies that made it possible to cater to one more interest group and mass more political power.

Prior to 1913, when the income tax was instated, one-third of federal revenue came from liquor taxes. However, Boudreaux writes, "By 1920, the income tax supplied two-thirds of Uncle Sam's revenues and nine times more revenue than was then supplied by liquor taxes and customs duties combined. In research that I did with University of Michigan law professor Adam Pritchard, we found that bulging income-tax revenues made it possible for Congress to finally give in to the decades-old movement for alcohol prohibition."

Similarly, it was not enlightened contrition that led self-serving politicians to revoke prohibition - it was the consequences of the Great Depression lessening income tax receipts, and the promise of new revenue from reinstated liquor taxes.

It is time for America to approach the problems of alcohol abuse and, more generally, the culture of abuse itself exhibited in Americans' mounting debt, obesity and drug use not with more myopic intolerance, but tolerance and open dialogue. Everyone looking to make a positive change in this respect should contact UH President Renu Khator, urging her to lend her name and the University of Houston's to the Amethyst Initiative, supporting open, educated dialogue about the culture of abuse that has been inculcated by federal and state policies regarding alcohol consumption.

Despite what blind pundits say, the time has come for untraditional solutions to solve a serious problem, and I like Renu's philosophy, "When life gives you lemons and everyone else is busy making lemonade, think about making margaritas!"

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