McCardell is the founder and president of Choose Responsibility, a nonprofit organization that describes its purpose as "to stimulate informed and dispassionate public discussion about the presence of alcohol in American culture and to consider policies that will effectively empower young adults age 18 to 20 to make mature decisions about the place of alcohol in their own lives."
The following are excerpts from McCardell's CNN commentary:
A study of binge drinking published in the Journal of the American Medical Association announced that "despite efforts at prevention, the prevalence of binge drinking among college students is continuing to rise, and so are the harms associated with it." ...McCardell's thoughts about minimum-age drinking laws, binge drinking by college students, and other matters related to underage drinking first garnered national interest in 2004, when the New York Times published his op-ed piece, "What Your College President Didn't Tell You." McCardell completed "The Effects of the 21 Year-Old Drinking Age: A White Paper" in 2006 and founded Choose Responsibility the following year.
Yet, in the face of mounting evidence that those young adults age 18 to 20 toward whom the drinking age law has been directed are routinely -- indeed in life- and health-threatening ways -- violating it, there remains a belief in the land that a minimum drinking age of 21 has been a "success." ...
The principal problem of 2009 is not drunken driving. The principal problem of 2009 is clandestine binge drinking. ...
Alcohol is a reality in the lives of young adults. We can either try to change the reality -- which has been our principal focus since 1984, by imposing Prohibition on young adults 18 to 20 -- or we can create the safest possible environment for the reality.
A drinking age minimum of 21 has not changed the reality. It's time to try something different.
Labels: underage drinking, binge drinking, drinking_age
Posted By: Aspen/CRC
I've always believed that raising the drinking age to 21 was an attempt to curb drinking. Of course I honestly never saw it work. I went to college and participated in underage drinking as did nearly everyone of my friends.
Do you thinking bringing the drinking age back to 18 would be better?