College Presidents Want Lower Drinking Age!?!
Posted on August 20th, 2008
You heard right. CNN is among a variety of sources reporting on the story:
College presidents from about 100 of the nation's best-known universities, including Duke, Dartmouth and Ohio State, are calling on lawmakers to consider lowering the drinking age from 21 to 18, saying current laws actually encourage dangerous binge drinking on campus.
Of course, MADD is ticked. They say lowering the drinking age would lead to more fatal car crashes.
The argument in favor of lowering the drink age is fairly simple. College aged kids are going to drink anyway. Many of them seem to think that since drinking is illegal for them, then when they do it they're already breaking the law - so why not do even stupider stuff? Making drinking legal for 18-year-olds could bring their behavior into more controlled environments where peer pressure and adult supervision could lead to better drinking behavior.
College presidents also point out that being in a car wreck isn't the only way to die from drinking.
One argument that doesn't work (as far as I'm concerned) is the "rights' argument. i listened to someone on a news show yesterday say that at 18 you can vote, you can die for your country, and you can do (or be asked to do) almost everything else an adult can do. Why not drink? If this were about rights that might be a good argument. But it's not about rights. It's abut public health…
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