Amethyst Initiative: Debate of Lowering Drinking Age Has MADD Ready to Fight

The Amethyst Initiative, a call for the debate over lowering the 21-year-old drinking age, has got a few people slightly perturbed. Over 100 presidents from the nation's colleges have signed the petition, which suggests that the age limitation is not working as well as the public believes and is actually promoting unethical and dangerous drinking behaviors among America's young college students. On the other hand, organizations like Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) say that the laws prohibiting people under the age of 21 from drinking have lowered the number of alcohol-related deaths since their enactment.

The Amethyst Initiative Argument

The Amethyst Initiative statement maintains that the legal drinking age of 21 is actually promoting unethical behavior in that its existence produces a culture of young people who break the law by obtaining illegal false identification cards, then purchase and consume alcohol. The contention is that the laws do not encourage responsibility but produce its opposite. The petitioners believe that the age limitation has fostered an increase in "binge" drinking.

Using the historical cautionary milepost of Prohibition as an example of failed government interference in the consumption of alcohol, the Amethyst Initiative also falls back on the argument of legal majority. In every major life decision, the legal age is 18: buying and owning cars and houses, making legally binding decisions, joining the military, voting, etc. The Amethyst Initiative also maintains that promoting alcohol abstinence as the only legal option to drinking has not had a visible effect upon student alcohol consumption.

The MADD Argument

MADD officials, according to the Associated Press, have been quick to rise to battle against the Amethyst Initiative, stating that the college presidents are simply looking for "a way out of an inconvenient problem." MADD also says that the petitioners are misrepresenting science and that lowering the drinking age would not only encourage more underage drinking but result in more drunk driving fatalities.

Laura Dean-Mooney, national president of MADD, stated, "It's very clear the 21-year-old drinking age will not be enforced at those campuses."

MADD CEO Chuck Hurley said that, looking at the change in age question, nearly all peer-reviewed studies showed raising the drinking age reduced drunk-driving deaths.

Is There A Solution?

Both groups, the petitioners and MADD, agree that there is a problem with college-age drinking. And although the Amethyst Initiative seems to make a pretty good argument for lowering the drinking age to 18, studies do seem to indicate that the MADD argument of maintaining the legal drinking age of 21, which went into effect with the passage of the National Minimum Drinking Age Act in 1984, should remain intact.

WebMD reports that James C. Fell of the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation found that laws making it illegal for anyone under the age of 21 to purchase or possess alcoholic beverages resulted in an 11% decrease in alcohol-related fatalities in driving accidents. The study as found that there was a 7% decrease in drunk-driving deaths under the age of 21 where states have stringent laws against the use of false IDs. Says Fell, "There has been evidence since the 1980s that an increase in the drinking age to 21 was having an impact on traffic deaths."

A report issued by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in 2004 stated that most alcohol related deaths cut an estimated 30 years off of the normal life span of average drinker, indicating that many alcohol-related deaths occur at a relatively young age. The report stated that drinking cost 2.3 million years of life lost in 1999 (about half the estimate for smoking, which, in an average life span, kills six times more people than alcohol). Bob Brewer of the CDC, co-author of the report which studied binge drinking, reasoned, "This difference exists because many alcohol-attributed deaths, particularly those caused by injuries, primarily affect youth and young adults, and deaths attributable to tobacco use are uncommon in this population." The study suggested further government policy changes to curb drinking among the nation's population, targeting the young as a critical age group.

John McCardell, former president of Vermont's Middlebury College and founder of the Amethyst Initiative, cites evidence in studies by epidemiologist Alexander Wagenaar, but Wagenaar sides with MADD in the argument. Wagenaar told the Associated Press that he believed that the presidents simply had a problem they did not wish to deal with. "It's really unfortunate, but the science is very clear."

Still, the Amethyst Initiative insists that theirs is not a call for the revocation of the 21-year-old drinking age but a call for debate on its effectiveness and to provide a forum with which to promote working alternatives and vehicles for responsibility.

But the fact remains that research shows that some half million students are injured every year at America's institutions of higher learning and approximately 1700 die in those accidents. Add to that the Associated Press analysis of government records that showed 157 college-age students, 18 to 23, drank themselves to death between 1999 and 2005 and the argument becomes more compelling for the higher age limitation to remain on the law books.

The Amethyst Initiative has a tough debate on their hands -- one they will not likely win.

Sources:

AmethystInitiative.org

Associated Press

WebMD

JoinTogether.org