What the Expert Says …
Stephen Wallace, Chairman and CEO of Students Against Destructive Decisions and author of “Reality Gap: Alcohol, Drugs, and Sex–What Parents Don’t Know and Teens Aren’t Telling.”
The national debate regarding the advisablity and acceptability of lowering the minimum legal drinking age is shedding long overdue light on the epidemic of underage and binge drinking – on our college campuses. The primary proponent, former Middlebury College President John M. McCardell, Jr. and his Amethyst Initiative, has signed up just 130 of the some 7,500 college presidents, testament to the intricacies of suggesting that the legal drinking age be lowered.
It is interesting to note that a majority of your Teen Board members who offered their opinions on the subject said “No,” while the majority of the Parent Board members said “Yes.” I’ll go with the teens! After all, don’t they have the best vantage point from which to observe the destructive – and often deadly – role that alcohol already plays in the lives of young people?
A good way to start this debate is to consider the disparity between youth and adult views represented here. This disparity is something I have also seen in my research. For example, a large number of young people (83%) rate drinking and driving as one of their foremost concerns, compared to less than half of their parents (48%). Similarly, parents tend to significantly underestimate how easy it is for their teens to obtain alcohol (52% of parents say it’s easy compared to 72% of teens). Parents also understimate teens’ opportunity to drink alcohol (60% of parents believe their teens can easily find an opportunity to drink versus 81% of teens). Perhaps most alarming is the fact that, compared to what their parents say about them, high school students are eight times more likely to admit they use alcohol.
But how to explain PTO parents lining up behind efforts to lower the drinking age (in contrast to 78% of Americans, according to an ABC News poll)? Likely because of the enduring myths that surround the issue of youth and alcohol – some of which were cited by your contributors. Let’s consider a few:
Many people grew up when the drinking age was 18 and they handled it OK.
In fact, the statistics don’t support this idea. One of the reasons the drinking age was raised from 18 to 21 is because states that lowered their drinking ages experienced increases in youth fatalities. When those states raised the age again to 21, fatalities significantly decreased. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimates that the minimum legal drinking age of 21 has saved more than 25,000 lives since 1975.
Most teens wouldn’t go overboard drinking alcohol if it weren’t forbidden.
In fact, teenagers choose not to drink because it is forbidden. According to Teens Today, students in grades 6-12 ranked the minimum legal drinking age as the number one reason why they choose not to use alcohol.
You are never going to stop underage drinking. We need to teach young people how to drink at home so they will be responsible about it.
The experiment of promoting responsible drinking at home has been an unmitigated failure: Teens Today tells us that more than half (52%) of teens who say their parents allow them to drink at home report that they also drink with their friends, compared with just 14% of kids whose parents do not allow them to drink.
SADD and I disagree with the idea that our society should promote tolerance toward underage drinking. If we stand firm, we will see a resulting decrease in the costs that result from underage drinking. Between 1982 and 1996, the number of alcohol-related traffic fatalities among 15- to 20-year-olds dropped by almost 60%. This change occurred as a result of a concerted effort at all levels of the culture – government, educators, the media, parents, and teens themselves – to make impaired driving unacceptable.
Alcohol is already used by young people more heavily and more frequently than all other drugs combined.
The average age for teens to start drinking is 13. The earlier in life one starts to drink the more likely it is that he or she will have alcohol problems later in life.
Alcohol is inextricably linked to accidental deaths, homicides, suicides, and assaults, not to mention falling grades and failing relationships.
These critical facts should give us all pause in advocating for a public policy that would likely place young lives already at risk in greater jeopardy.
Tracey Adamowski, IA 10/08/08
I do not think that binge drinking has anything to do with the drinking age, but rather with many other ills in our culture - too much stress/pressure, lack of family time (and not driving from one activiity to another, but rather real, quality time), bad examples set by adults using alcohol and media examples of poor choices with positive rewards to the characters or stars, etc... How about college's doing more to provide non-alcohol events - starting with "tailgating". If that shocks you then I would say that is EXACTLY what I mean about this being a cultural problem!
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