Let me start by stating the obvious: the majority of Americans aim to put legislators into office whose interests lay in passing just laws onto our legal system. However, every so often certain laws pass into the books that are simply unfair and do not serve justice to portions of our population. Take, for example, Exhibit A: The National Minimum Drinking Age Act of 1984. By passing this act, the federal government has required all states to enforce a minimum drinking age of 21, or be penalized by a 10 percent forfeiture of highway funding.
Such tactics that force states and citizens into compliance without proper discourse and discussion are shameful acts that certainly are not in keeping with the image of “the American way.” Even worse than the way the drinking Act was put into effect is that it places the legal drinking age at 21, an unfair service and insult to the population under 21 who by the age of 18 can legally assume full responsibility of their actions. By 18 we are given the power to enlist in the military, choose to get married and purchase a gun, yet we are deemed incompetent to control our alcohol intake. By the age of 18 an individual is treated as an adult by law, given full responsibility of their own affairs and expected to pay the price for their misbehavior in the same fashion an adult would. Yet despite all of this, for some strange reason between the ages of 18 to 20, for those three years, you are simply not allowed (and not trusted) to sip beer with your friends.
A supporter of the drinking age being at 21 would argue that the National Minimum Drinking Age Act of 1984 has reduced injuries related to drinking, saved lives and therefore should keep its legal standing. Yet this argument has serious flaws. Allow me to explain: For starters, we must acknowledge a fundamental fact — people under 21 are still drinking even with the 1984 Act in place and seem poised to continue to for the foreseeable future. The 1984 Act has in some respects done more damage to young drinkers than good. After being forced to head underground during the last 25 years, it comes as no surprise that our generation is filled with reckless drinkers who do more damage to themselves and people around them than our parents’ generation, a generation that was treated as adults and therefore learned to act as such around alcohol. An interview with Professor John McCardell, which you can find posted on ChooseResponsibility.org, provides some great insight into this phenomenon. McCardell remarks that society must “treat young adults as the young adults that they are and not infantilize them. Infantilize a young person, [and] then don’t be surprised by infantile behavior.”
By restoring the drinking age to 18 and, as ChooseResponsibility.org suggests, creating a licensing program that will require under-21 drinkers to take a course on responsible drinking (not among the lines of AlcoholEdu, but rather driver’s education), young adults will be allowed to assume the responsibility that we have long deserved. Such a system would add an additional sense of seriousness to young people when approached with situations involving alcohol (at the risk of losing their license), whereas an increasingly popular practice of fudging, forging and obtaining fake identification has eased many 18-, 19- and 20-year-olds into law-breaking habits. Such bad habits formed by disrespecting the law can only snowball into bigger disrespects toward laws pertaining to alcohol, some which can have horrific consequences.
It is with this in mind that I urge the members of our campus to endorse a petition for the Amethyst Initiative to be signed by President Lois DeFleur. The Amethyst Initiative is a list of college and university presidents from across the country that support engaging the debate on our national drinking age; all presidents are welcome to join, whether they are in favor of a lower age or higher age. A Facebook group is online if you would like to find out when and where you can sign the petition.
I know that there are many people on this campus who feel that the drinking age of 21 is unjust and unfair. I would hope that you would join the efforts going on around us to do something about that and show your support for change. From signing a petition to writing a letter to our elected officials, a lot can be done to give us young adults rights we deserve and once had — the right to drink responsibly and not worry about threats made to us by laws that are unjust, the right to not feel pressured to obtain fake identification in order to have a night out with our friends and perhaps, most importantly, the right to be treated equally as our fellow adults are.