Drinking age debated
Published April 17, 2007
When prohibition was repealed, each state set its own legal drinking age. Some set it at 18 and some at 21. But beginning in the late 1970s, advocacy groups such as Mothers Against Drunk Driving lobbied to raise the drinking age to 21 in all states.
With the passage of the National Minimum Drinking Age Act in 1984, states were obligated to raise their legal drinking ages to 21 or lose 10 percent of their Federal-aid highway funds.
Choose Responsibility, a non-profit organization created at the beginning of 2007 by John McCardell, the former President of Middlebury College in Vermont, seeks to stimulate discaussion about responsible drinking and lower the drinking age to 18, McCardell's assistant Grace Kronenberg said.
"Our main goal is to prompt debate and get people talking about the drinking age," she said. "The situation now is bad and looking more bleak."
McCardell has observed drinking on college campuses both when the drinking age was 18 and when it was 21, Kronenberg said. She said the higher drinking age has not deterred 18-20-year-olds from drinking but has just made them resort to more clandestine drinking, binge-drinking, "pre-gaming" and drinking games.
Drinking to get drunk has increased in the last 20 years and has become a means to an end rather than an accessory to a party, Kronenberg said.
"People are drinking and then socializing, not drinking while socializing," she said. "Things like beer pong and flipcup didn't exist on college campuses 20 years ago. As long as people have to sneak around, they will continue drinking just to get drunk."
Wellness Resource Center Director Kim Dude said she is skeptical that binge-drinking has increased due to the raised drinking age. She said MU data, most often seen on the Most of Us campaign, does not support that assertion at all.
"When looking at drinking behaviors now versus when I was a student here, coupled with MU survey data, I think students are more responsible now than they used to be," she said.
Dude said many Americans believe drinking is more responsible in Europe because of lower drinking ages there, but she said that is a myth. She said the rate of alcoholism is higher in Europe and said if the drinking age were reduced to 18 in America, alcoholism would also increase.
Kronenberg said Choose Responsibility's main goal is educating 18-20-year-olds about responsible drinking, but in order to responsibly do this, the group must also advocate for a lower drinking age.
"If you are advocating for responsible drinking among 18-20-year-olds, you're advocating for something against the law," she said.
Although Choose Responsibility has only been in existence for a few months, its members have already spoken at seven college campuses and are working to create a chapter-based organization. As funding increases and chapters grow, Kronenberg said the organization could turn into a political advocacy group.
Choose Responsibility has had some contact with Michael Mikkelsen, a Kansas City resident who started a ballot initiative in Missouri to lower the drinking age to 18. He created a Facebook group called Missouri 18 to Drink Ballot Initiative. Mikkelsen wants to work with legislatures to introduce legislation, although he thinks House leadership will not give it any floor time.
In order for the initiative to get on the state ballot, Mikkelsen would need more than 100,000 signatures. He said he thinks it's feasible that Missouri voters would pass the measure, but it would require a strong campaign behind it.
Kronenberg said in order to change state law, national law would have to be changed first to allow states to change their drinking ages without losing federal funding.
Dude said there is no one answer to reducing harmful drinking, but education is indeed most important.
"We know some people are going to drink, so we look for ways to reduce how much they drink," she said. "Everyone learns in slightly different ways, so we try to provide education in a variety of different manners."