For parents with soon-to-be high school graduates about to head off to college this fall, the weeks ahead are fraught with danger. Graduation night itself, lazy summer months, and that first year away at college are alcohol-soaked minefields for students and the stuff of nightmares for parents.

Kids 18 to 20 years of age (do we still call them kids when they can vote, enter into legally binding contracts, marry, adopt children and enlist in the armed forces?) are prohibited from legally drinking alcohol in this country. States set their own legal drinking age until 1984 when President Ronald Reagan authorized the National Minimum Drinking Age Act, which effectively established a minimum drinking age of 21.

States actually retain the right to establish their own drinking age limits. But the National Minimum Drinking Age Act reduces federal highway funding by 10 percent to any state that sets the age lower than 21, a move that, in effect, blackmailed state officials into compliance.

There are exceptions.  Some states allow minors and “adults under 21” (my phrase for the 18- to 20-year-old set) to consume alcohol for religious purposes, when with a parent or legal guardian, for medical reasons (I’d like to know what medical ailment requires the consumption of alcohol), and for a few other conditions.

Thirty states allow families to furnish alcohol to their underage children (no one else’s children, just their own), but 20 states – including California – do not, according to the Alcohol Policy Information System.

So, in effect, the drinking age in the United States is 21, even though 18 is the age of majority – that age when citizens acquire by law the legal rights and responsibilities that qualify them as adults. Drinking alcohol is about the only right prohibited to adults under 21.

In most countries throughout the world, 18 is both the age of majority and the legal drinking age.

Italian wine

I recently attended an adult class on Italian wine, a fascinating account of the history and science of wine-making in Italy, which goes back thousands of years. The lecturer spoke about the regions of the country that produce particular varieties and the hundreds of types of grapes used to make an astonishing assortment of wines.

An Italian wine connoisseur, the speaker made an off-hand comment that stuck with me. He spoke of a particular type of wine that he “learned to drink” when he was a young child. He said parents in Italy teach their children how to drink at an early age – always with food, he said, and never simply to get drunk. Wine was to be savored, used to enhance a meal and paired with certain foods to accentuate the flavors.

How it can be, he asked, that we in the U.S. send 18-year-old soldiers to fight and often die in war but forbid them to enjoy a glass of wine with a fine meal?

The glorification of alcohol and its image in the U.S. as an essential party prop make direct comparisons with European drinking customs impossible.

Nevertheless, with alcohol abuse endemic to teens and young adults, perhaps there are lessons to be learned from our friends abroad. The crisis, and that is what many are calling it, has precipitated new debate about the wisdom of the current minimum drinking age.

Opponents of lowering the drinking age make good points when they say that lives have been saved on our highways by restricting the number of drunk – especially young, inexperienced, inebriated – drivers. They also suggest that younger and younger teens would be drinking if 18-year-olds could purchase alcohol legally and supply it to their friends.

However, organizations like Mothers Against Drunk Driving refuse to acknowledge that we have a serious problem in this country with underage binge drinking that has continued unabated despite best efforts at education. And I’m not hearing a lot of suggestions from them about what to do about it – except, perhaps, to persist with pointless lecturing and scare tactics.

High school graduation – a day of joy but a night of dread for parents and police officers everywhere – is approaching. And graduates off to college in the fall, away from home for the first time, may find that traditional fraternity hazing seems tame compared to the unrestrained alcoholic excess common to our nation’s college campuses.

Amethyst Initiative

Alcohol abuse has so consumed college services that the presidents of 135 U.S. universities have signed what’s known as the Amethyst Initiative, which calls for new discussions about the minimum legal age for drinking.

The statement signed by the heads of universities emphasizes that the current law is not working. It makes the following points:

– A culture of dangerous, clandestine “binge-drinking” – often conducted off-campus – has developed.

– Alcohol education that mandates abstinence as the only legal option has not resulted in significant constructive behavioral change among our students.

– Adults under 21 are deemed capable of voting, signing contracts, serving on juries and enlisting in the military, but are told they are not mature enough to have a beer.

– By choosing to use fake IDs, students make ethical compromises that erode respect for the law.

The signatories call upon elected officials to re-open the debate and invite new ideas into the discussion, promising to play a prominent role in the conversation. The initiative also asks public officials “to consider whether the 10 percent highway fund ‘incentive’ encourages or inhibits that debate.”

A Washington, D.C.-based organization called Choose Responsibility is actively promoting a nationwide discussion about lowering the drinking age and states on its Web site that “Legal Age 21 has created a drinking culture that criminalizes young adults for engaging in normal adult behavior.”

The nonprofit organization, which notes on its Web site that it takes no money from alcoholic beverage companies, applauds the state of Vermont where Resolution S.R.17 recently passed the Senate urging Congress “to consider granting waivers of federal funding penalties to states that would like the freedom to debate alternatives to Legal Age 21.”

This resolution’s passage, the group says, shows that momentum is building for a national debate about the drinking age.

The organization’s supporters argue that binge drinking is one potentially deadly consequence of the current law and offered the following comment from a mother whose daughter died in 2009 after a night of binge drinking:

“Young people are drinking, and drinking dangerously, despite the just-say-no message that is so pervasive in our schools and around our kitchen tables,” said Kathleen Quartaro. “Our children are not safe living in this environment that encourages binge drinking. It is time for parents to join together and speak out about the dangerous consequences of Legal Age 21.”

A November 2008 article from the New York Times interviews underage college students on the subject, exposing the practice of “pre-gaming” which is heavy drinking in private before heading to a bar or public event. The article quotes two students on the subject:

“You want to get drunk enough to last your time at the bar,” explains Joe D. Alleva, a 19-year-old freshman from Daytona Beach, Fla. “You want to get hammered drunk.”


Supply and demand also dictates that minors drink quickly and heavily, says Justin A. Willems, an 18-year-old freshman. “If you’re under 21 and go to a party and there’s alcohol,” he says, “you don’t know when you’re going to see it again.”

Pot is better, advocates say

As I was mulling this over, an article on a related matter from Northwestern University’s May 27 newspaper caught my attention.

Marijuana advocate Mason Tvert, executive director for Safer Alternative for Enjoyable Recreation, told NU students at a recent event that outlawing marijuana steers people toward the more dangerous and addictive behavior of alcohol consumption. The event was co-sponsored by the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws.

Tvert said the legal status of alcohol sends the message that it’s safer to use than marijuana, and that has “serious implications for college students.” He told students that marijuana, classified as an illegal drug, should be legalized and is far safer than alcohol which causes 35,000 deaths annually.

Over-consumption of alcohol can shut down the body and result in death, said Tvert, claiming that marijuana use by itself does not cause death.

The horror stories we hear about adolescents and young adults dying from drunk driving and over-consumption of alcohol are enough to drive one to drink – or toke up, as the case may be. Those last years of high school – and those all-too-dangerous first years of college – are years of hell for worried parents.

It’s time we took a fresh look at the youth culture that embraces binge drinking, which can lead to alcoholism, serious medical conditions, date rape, drunk driving and death.

Would lowering the drinking age make a difference? Would legalizing marijuana? Everyone has an opinion, but decisions based on hard evidence are in short supply.

What’s clear is that we’ve got this one all wrong, and something has to change to help our children survive this beer-guzzling, alcohol-saturated culture we’ve created.

It’s not the place of middle and high schools to be addressing issues that can only be solved by attacking ingrained societal values and cultural norms that adults all around us endorse. Kids are not stupid – they can see with their own two eyes that the messages sent to them in schools about the dangers of alcohol are inconsistent with the common behavior of adults, respectable adults at that.

And it’s not the government’s place to be inserting itself into our kitchens and dining rooms, telling parents how we can or cannot educate our children about the acceptable role of moderate alcohol consumption, when the government itself refuses to acknowledge that there is a problem and continues with laws that make no sense.

We have utterly failed to protect our children from this insidiously cavalier attitude toward alcohol in our society, and it’s well past time we stopped pretending we are addressing the issue with any effectiveness.