Prohibition hard to swallow
We count on educators to do more than just teach. We put young adults in the care of colleges and universities so they can learn and grow. So when a group of more than 100 of the nation’s top educators says the drinking age doesn’t work, the nation needs to listen.
The group, called the Amethyst Initiative, says that setting the drinking age at 21 “has created a culture of dangerous binge drinking on their campuses.” They ought to know. Parents and families are exposed to individual drinking as their children and friends misbehave. Educators get every mistake by the case – beer bashes, missed classes, drunken students and more.
According to “The Surgeon General’s Call to Action To Prevent and Reduce Underage Drinking 2007,” teen drinking is a nationwide problem “despite laws against it in all 50 States; decades of Federal, State, Tribal, and local programs aimed at preventing and reducing underage drinking; and efforts by many private entities.”
The report says the biggest rate of alcohol dependence is in the 18-20 age group. That equals a lot of drunken college students. It’s a deadly serious issue that can lead to alcoholism, other health problems and even death.
As a society, we’ve long since stopped being appalled by teen drinking. The report shows underage drinking “is often viewed as a rite of passage” and “is frequently facilitated by adults.”
That much is obvious. Parents either turn a blind eye to it or endorse it as behavior they themselves enjoyed in their heyday. The teen drink fest becomes a cultural reality. Almost any teen movie takes the “Varsity Blues” approach. Magazines rate the “party schools” and Hollywood lionizes the resulting hook-up culture.
That’s why it’s so important when the heads of some of the country’s biggest name schools ask for a new strategy. Six of the college leaders are right here in Maryland. The heads of the College of Notre Dame of Maryland, Goucher College, Johns Hopkins University, Towson University, University of Maryland – Biotechnology Institute and the University System of Maryland simply ask for “an informed and dispassionate public debate.”
And they are promptly skewered for passing the buck. They aren’t. It’s their bucks and reputations at risk against pressure groups.
In other words, leaders who admit the problem get beaten up by Mothers Against Drunk Driving and politicians who are lining up to hem and haw while more college students drink themselves into next semester.
You could argue all day about the merits of the U.S. drinking age vs. lower standards in Europe and other nations where the age of 18 is far more typical. But it shouldn’t be an argument. It should be exactly what the college presidents want – a “public debate.”
To find out what the college and university presidents actually say, go to www.amethystinitiative.org
