Posted on 07/18/2005 10:19:10 AM PDT by Last Dakotan
Two decades ago, few in the booze business believed it would happen here, in the beer capital of the world. Sobering Facts College students spend $5.5 billion a year on alcohol, more than they spend on textbooks, soft drinks, tea, milk, juice and coffee combined. Source: Harvard School of Public Health study 12th-graders who reported consuming alcohol in the last 30 days dropped to 48% in 2004 from 66% in 1985. Source: University of Michigan study
While other, more sober states caved in to the federal government's order to raise their drinking ages to 21 or lose a portion of highway funds, Wisconsin - insulated by the thick biceps of the Tavern League - would not be easily blackmailed.
It was 1985. Debate swirled. Would the economic loss from cutting 19- and 20-year-olds out of the legal drinking equation outweigh highway withholdings? Would bumping up the age cut teen traffic deaths and eliminate the "blood borders" - the so-called stretches of highway where teens from other states with higher drinking ages sometimes crashed and died driving home after a night of drinking in Wisconsin?
Twenty years after Wisconsin acquiesced, like every other state, the drinking age is still hotly debated.
Supporters say the law has saved thousands of lives and created a healthier, safer environment on college campuses and throughout society.
Opponents say it has forced teens to drink in secret, leading to reckless binge drinking and unsupervised, sometimes dangerous house parties. They say it's a civil rights violation and an insult to military members trained to kill but not trusted to consume alcohol.
Their complaints are getting attention.
Legislators in Vermont are considering a bill to lower the legal drinking age to 18. Wisconsin lawmakers are considering dropping the age to 19 for military members. Already some U.S. cruise lines have dropped the age to 18 for drinking beer and wine on excursions outside U.S. waters.
Each side comes to the debate with statistics to back up its argument.
Alcohol-related traffic deaths of drivers under 21 dropped by 17% immediately after states increased their minimum drinking age, says Alexander Wagenaar, a professor of epidemiology with the University of Florida who has studied alcohol issues for three decades.
"Raising the age to 21 is probably the single most effective prevention effort that we've done for teen drinking in the last 30 years," said Wagenaar, who estimates that as many as 20,000 lives have been saved in car crashes alone as a direct result of raising the drinking age.
But studies also show that more people ages 21 to 24 were killed after the bump in the drinking age, suggesting that the law simply delayed the deaths, according to John McCardell, president of Middlebury College in Vermont, who believes college campuses need to be more progressive in exposing students to responsible drinking.
"It would be hard to say with a straight face . . . that the law has had the effect of reducing drinking on campuses in an appreciable way," McCardell said. "I would argue it's had the opposite effect." Teenage crashes dropped
Statistics from the Wisconsin Department of Transportation Bureau of Transportation Safety back Wagenaar's findings, said Dennis Hughes, the DOT's chief of safety policy analysis.
The alcohol-related crash rate for 19-year-olds dropped from 22 per 1,000 licensed drivers in 1985 to 5 in 2003, the latest year for which data is available, according to DOT figures. And when Wisconsin raised its minimum drinking age from 18 to 19 in 1984, the alcohol-related crash rate for 18-year-olds fell from 21 per 1,000 licensed drivers to 12. By 2003, that rate had dipped to 5 alcohol-related crashes per 1,000 licensed drivers.
"The numbers for highway safety are irrefutable, and we've reaped those benefits for a long time," Hughes said. "A lot more kids are surviving their teens."
Kari Kinnard, too, sees benefits to the higher minimum drinking age. As president of MADD Wisconsin, Kinnard pays close attention to the issue. Kinnard says recent studies on the human brain show that it doesn't fully develop until age 21.
"Supporting evidence just keeps coming in that the right decision was made to move the drinking age," Kinnard said.
The higher drinking age has meant fewer injuries and deaths at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said Susan Crowley, director of PACE (Policy, Alternatives, Community and Education), a 10-year, $1.2 million program aimed at curtailing underage drinking. The study is funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
"Without a doubt, we've seen (the 21 minimum drinking age) improve the health and safety on campus," Crowley said.
More students are abstaining from drinking and are willing to admit they don't drink. Fewer students are being taken to detox, and fewer students report negative consequences as a result of their own or others' alcohol consumption, Crowley said, pointing to statistics gathered in the last five years.
Others, such as Richard Keeling, an expert on the effects of the 21 minimum legal drinking age, caution against crediting the drinking age for such progress.
PACE strategies such as cracking down on house parties and increasing fines for alcohol-related offenses are likely more responsible for changing behavior than a higher drinking age, Keeling said.
As a medical doctor, the former director of health services at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and past editor of the Journal of American College Health, Keeling said the 21 minimum drinking age has had a "great many negative consequences." Teenagers are going to drink no matter what the legal age is, Keeling said.
"The pattern for underage students is more dangerous," said Keeling, who now runs a consulting firm in New York. "Afraid of being caught, they drink a lot in a short period of time. They do it less often but more intensely." Case for supervised drinking
Much of the problem stems from lack of supervised drinking experience, said McCardell, the Middlebury president. That's where colleges could help. They could and should play an active role in teaching young people to drink responsibly, McCardell said.
"You have to give them some exposure," McCardell said. "That doesn't mean sending everybody out to get drunk. But if you're serious about teaching somebody biology, you're going to include a laboratory. College campuses could be little laboratories of progressiveness."
Brendan O'Connell, a senior at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, says some type of supervised exposure to alcohol at a younger age would be hugely helpful to young adults. O'Connell tells stories of friends who drink themselves sick on their 21st birthdays. Bars offer free shots, and birthday revelers don't know when to stop, he said.
"It's almost like a holiday. It's something you've been waiting for," he said. "I've been to 21st birthday parties where I've had to drag my friends home. It's pretty bad."
U.S. Rep. Tom Petri (R-Wis.) is one politician willing to consider alternatives to the 1984 act that coupled states' drinking ages with federal highway dollars. Petri has been working to persuade his colleagues that change is worth considering.
"If we're concerned about alcohol-related fatalities - and we should be - we should focus on alcohol-related fatalities," he said. "We need to leave greater flexibility to states to figure out the most effective way, rather than tell them we know all the answers."
Raising the age simply caused 21-year-olds to act like 18-year-olds, and 24-year-olds to act like 21-year-olds. It made it worse in the long run.
"My opinion-if you are old enough to serve your country, you're old enough to be served alcohol. JMHO."
I have mixed feelings about this issue,
I know I got my arse shot off in Nam when I was 20 in 1969 and still couldn't get a drink in a lot of places in America but I also understand the reasoning behind limiting the drinking age to 21...
Maybe the enlistment/draft age should be raised to 21 along with the drinking and smoking for that matter.
Raising the enlistment age to 21 would also give young people the time to go to college and get an education uninterrupted... just a thought...
Semper Fi,
Kelly
19 should be that age. You're out of high school and making plans for the future.
Always an interesting topic.
"Tying the drinking age to federal highway funds was a blatantly unconstitutional overstep of Federal authority."
But they got away with it didn't they?
federal idiots know this. the kids live longer, so they pay more in taxes and take out more student loans.. sure they don't get the interest payments for years to come, but the money itself is all insured, so they get that back, even with only a little interest.
Would someone please tell me: What happens between 23:55 hrs. on the night before your 21st birthday, and 00:00hrs begining the day of your birthday that all of a sudden makes you a responsible adult?
some people never become "responsible adults"
look at Draft Dodger Clintoon...
EXACTLY RIGHT!
Click here, here, and here to learn more about MADD's prohibitionist agenda.
The federal 21-to-drink defacto prohibition law is a national disgrace and needs to be repealed as long as adults aged 18 through 21 minus 1 day are in harm's way defending our liberties.
and btw, lets not forget that reeeeely responsible "adult" Ted Kennedy...
Absolutely true in my experience. The fact that you had to go out of your way to get alcohol in high school made it natural to then take that alcohol and get as screwed up as possible. I still enjoy drinking, but I gave up drinking like that shortly after turning 21, which I suspect is true for many people here.
As an aside, what is up with Wisconsin? It seems to be the norm there for guys to knock down 12 or so frosty ones a day. I had a buddy from there who kept that pace and was blown away to hear that his whole family, grandfather on down, kept it with him.
Since most people think like you and I do- the question is why did we allow idiots to make the law this way?
The answer is that people lost faith in personal responsibility, a central tenet of conservatisim. Groups like MADD didn't go after criminals like they should have, but after our freedom.
"My opinion-if you are old enough to serve your country, you're old enough to be served alcohol. JMHO."
Generally speaking (depending on the CO), this is the case.
"How about tying it to military service. Old enough to serve, old enough to drink."
Such is already the law.
The fact that an 18-year-old can't have table wine at a family gathering is outrageous. If we were libs we could scream "cultural oppression" and watch how fast the law would change.
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