Alcohol Laws: Should the Drinking Age be Lowered?

Aug. 27, 2007— -- As college students usher in the start of a new term with beer pong and keg stands, the nation revisits what's now a fixture of collegiate life: drinking age laws.

An increasing number of college officials are arguing that current drinking laws have failed. Instead of keeping students away from alcohol, they argue, the laws simply drive underage drinking underground and toward unsafe extremes.

Leading the debate for change is John M. McCardell, Jr., president emeritus of Vermont's Middlebury College, who proposes rolling back the legal drinking age from 21 to 18 after granting "drinking licenses" to those who complete an extensive alcohol education program.

McCardell recently founded "Choose Responsibility," a nonprofit organization dedicated to lowering the drinking age and researching the effects of the current law. He says his proposal will "bring alcohol back out into the open, acknowledge that 18-year-olds are adults in the eyes of the law [as they are] in every other respect, and it will reduce the abusive drinking that has become so widespread in the last 20 years."

McCardell said he was tired of facing what he called "two impossible choices" between policing and ignoring drinking on campus. The drinking age law, he contends, has only increased binge drinking by pushing alcohol use into hiding.

And when students drink, increasingly they're turning to hard liquor.

"The pattern of drinking has changed and gotten worse, that's where I agree with [McCardell]," said Dr. David Anderson, director for Advancement of Public Health at George Mason University and an expert on college alcohol use. While he opposes lowering the drinking age, he said "the pattern has gotten more high risk."

Two recent studies by the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention find that underage binge drinkers are turning to hard liquor as their main alcohol source, unlike adults who rely more often on beer. Liquors such as vodka are easy to smuggle in water bottles, and make it easier to get drunk.

But some public health researchers say the data do not support McCardell's claim.