Lowering the drinking age to 18 would be a “fatal mistake,” and university officials in Maryland should remove their names from a list that supports debating the idea, said Delegate William Bronrott, chairman of the House Special Committee on Drug and Alcohol Abuse.
“If you want more highway crashes, more death, more injuries, more alcohol abuse and addiction, and all that goes hand-in-hand with more addiction in our communities, then go ahead and lower the minimum drinking age to 18, because that’s what you’re going to get,” said Bronrott, a Montgomery County Democrat who helped pass a federal law aimed at keeping the drinking age at 21.
“I’ve only seen studies that have routinely reinforced the fact that the 21 drinking age law has worked effectively to reduce death and injury not only on our roadways but in a variety of ways.”
More than 100 college and university presidents and chancellors, including six from Maryland, recently signed a declaration called the Amethyst Initiative that supports holding a national discussion on lowering the legal drinking age from 21 to 18.
Bronrott worked as an aide to Rep. Michael Barnes, D-Md., who in 1984 sponsored the law to withhold 10 percent of a state’s federal highway funds if it lowers its minimum drinking age below 21. Soon after the law’s passage, states with legal drinking age of 18 raised it to 21.
The school presidents would need waivers from the law. They say that students drink whether the law permits it or not, and lowering the drinking age would keep students from immaturely drinking large amounts in a short amount of time, a practice known as binge drinking.
“It’s not as if we know all the answers, but what we feel we know is that the present situation is not working the way people intended it to work,” said Baird Tipson, president of Washington College, on Maryland’s Eastern Shore.
“We’re educational institutions and we want to teach people to be adults. What we’re doing now is teaching them that if there are bad laws, there are all kinds of ways to go around them.”
Maryland officials who signed the initiative include Tipson; University System of Maryland Chancellor William “Brit” Kirwan; Towson University President Robert Caret; University of Maryland, College Park President C. Dan Mote Jr.; University of Maryland-Biotechnology Institute President Jennifer Hunter-Cevera; and College of Notre Dame of Maryland President Mary Pat Seurkamp.
Caroline Cash, executive director of the Maryland and Delaware groups of Mothers Against Drunk Driving, accused the presidents of trying to shirk their responsibilities to their students.
“We’d rather look for a solution to the problems than pass it down to a younger age,” Cash said.
“It’s an immense issue, there’s no question, but I think there’s concern that the No. 1 person, the person with the most authority on a college campus, isn’t willing to enforce this law. That’s very disconcerting to me.”
But Baird said that schools do all they can to enforce drinking laws, and that educating 18- to 20-year-olds to drink responsibly in public would require just as much effort.
A survey released Monday by the Nationwide Mutual Insurance Co. shows that of more than 2,000 adults, 72 percent think that lowering the drinking age would result in more binge drinking among teenagers.
Neil Pedersen, administrator of the State Highway Administration, said he wants to work with schools to find a solution to underage drinking, but he wants no part in a debate on lowering the drinking age.
“I think we would be very concerned, based on a number of studies and the result of lowering the drinking age in the 1970s, about the effect it would have on traffic fatalities,” Pedersen said.
The head of the initiative to lower the drinking age, John McCardell, is a Maryland native who attended graduate school at Johns Hopkins University and is the former president of Middlebury College in Vermont.
To read the statement the presidents and chancellors signed, go to the Amethyst Initiative Web page.
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