In a Sept. 16 commentary on the CNN website, former Middlebury College President John M. McCardell Jr. advocates abolishing the U.S. minimum drinking age of 21 and replacing it with a system that educates teenagers and young adults about the proper use of alcohol, and and then licenses them to drink.

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." ...

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.

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.

Labels: underage drinking, binge drinking, drinking_age

Posted By: Aspen/CRC 1 Comment

Some college officials are advocating a lowering of the national drinking age 21 to 18. The debate is drawing considerable amounts of criticism.

"...in 1984, President Ronald Regan signed into law the National Uniform Drinking Age 21 Act. The change helped to decrease fatal crashes by 59 percent between 1982 and 1998, saving thousands of lives in the process. In addition, a 1998 study showed 10 years after the age was raised to 21 in New York, 58 percent of people 18, 19, and 20 reported reduced drinking, while impaired driving rates decreased."

Studies have also shown that the brain continues to develop until a person reaches about 25 years of age, meaning young drinkers risk impeding the development process. The liver is also not fully developed, which means that alcohol has a stronger adverse affect on teenagers than it does on adults. Source: The Buffalo News

Read the Pros and Cons of Lowering the Legal Drinking Age

Labels: drinking_age, college_students

Posted By: Aspen Education Group 0 Comments

Drinking and partying, according to many, is just "part of the college experience." And some believe that the 21-year-old drinking age keeps collegiate alcohol use hidden and hard to deal with, so they're proposing lowering the legal age to 18 years old.

"MADD [Mothers Against Drunk Driving] is urging parents to reconsider the safety of schools whose presidents want to re-evaluate the 21-year-old drinking age..."

Studies have shown that up to 40 percent of college students have some symptoms of alcohol abuse. One educator believes that problem won't be eliminated by a lower drinking age. Source: WWAY3 News Channel (Wilmington, NC)

Labels: drinking_age, underage_drinking, binge_drinking

Posted By: Aspen Education Group 0 Comments