Lowering the Drinking Age

There is a movement afoot (to use Sherlock Holmes' word) to lower the drinking age from 21 to 18 in Pennsylvania. One of the many college presidents who have signed on to this movement and is actively promoting the agenda is the president of Elizabethtown College, Ted Long. He, along with many others, is convinced that the reason why there is so much of the dangerous and sometimes fatal practice of binge drinking on college campuses is because the age limit is set too high, that lowering the minimum age for the legal consumption of alcohol will have a sufficiently satisfactory effect on diminishing the participation in binge drinking.

Derek Melleby, of the Center for Parent/Youth Understanding (CPYU wrote an excellent opinion piece in the Sunday Lancaster News that points out some fatal flaws in Long's argument.

It seems to me that part of what Long, and those with a similar argument, are doing is working to abandon - or at least greatly lessen - their responsibility for helping students that might be or are given to even one experience with the illegal consumption of alcohol. As Melleby points out in his article, the problem is rooted in a culture that increasingly encourages ignoring any reason to delaying gratification of any kind - alcohol, drugs, sex, possessions, etc. And, as Melleby points out, and despite what Long and others want to argue, having raised the legal minimum drinking age from 18 to 21 HAS had a very positive effect on reducing injuries and fatalities associated with alcohol consumption.

Long argues that, because there is so much time spent having to police students there is, then, insufficient time for counseling students. I wonder how much time Long himself has done either? If he thinks that those who do the policing cannot also do the counseling, i would refer him to a friend of mine who is a cop on a local municipal police force who does just that. Or perhaps he does not think that there are enough available staff to do the policing with sufficient staff left to do the counseling. Hmmm... maybe an increase in staff could help resolve that dilemma. In either case, it means a greater expenditure of college resources one way or the other. Perhaps that's something he's trying to avoid (although the college has gone through tremendous expansion in the 17 years i've lived in the Elizabethtown community - a tremendous expenditure, so it's not that money isn't available).

Or maybe Melleby is right. Perhaps Long is under the assumption that one of the reasons students come to Elizabethtown college is for the alcohol experience. If that's true, that doesn't say much good about the college, does it? And while that, indeed, may be why SOME students enroll there, i seriously doubt if that's the motivation for but a handful.

No, i seriously doubt lowering the drinking age will be helpful to the college or the community.

In fact, i would advocate not only keeping the drinking age at 21, i'm inclined to be in favor of raising the driving age from 16 to 18 in Pennsylvania.