An estimated 25,000 lives have been saved by the 21 Minimum Legal Drinking Age. (NHTSA, 2008)
Underage drinking, particularly in the university setting, is a serious problem that requires serious reflection. The problem should be examined without jeopardizing a law that has saved nearly 25,000 lives since going into effect.
* Alcohol is the number one youth drug problem in America.1
* More young people die from alcohol-related incidents than from all other illicit drugs combined.2
* An estimated 1,700 college students between the ages of 18 and 24 die each year from alcohol-related unintentional injuries, including motor vehicle crashes. Approximately 600,000 students are unintentionally injured while under the influence of alcohol.3
* More than 30 percent of college students abuse alcohol and six percent are dependent on alcohol – rates much higher than for young adults who are not in college.4
* The problem of binge drinking is worse among college-age students in college versus those who are not in college.5
* The earlier youth drink (average age of first drink is about 16), the more likely they will become dependent on alcohol and drive drunk later in life.6
1 SAMHSA, 2004
2 National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, 2000
3 Surgeon General’s Call to Action to Prevent and Reduce Underage Drinking, 2007
4 Knight et al, 2002
5 Slutske, et al, 2004; Johnson, et al, 1997
6 Grant & Dawson, 1997. Hingson et al, 2003. Hingson & Kenkel, 2004
60 minutes did a segment about kids and drinking last night that got me to thinking. This is a big deal, not just college age but with every age demographic, this is a Big Deal. Drinking knows no limit or boundary.
You are a grown up in every sense of a legal way at 18. You can vote, drive, get married, go to war but you can't drink until 21. Apparently there is lots of action on both sides. One HS teacher stated that 18 year olds are getting the 21 year olds to buy for them - if the law was changed, the 15 year olds would be asking the 18 year olds to buy for them with would start affecting high schools in a big way. I think that is a potential nightmare for schools and parents.Another suggested a drinking license, run the same way as a drivers license. Take a class, pass a test, get a license and if you screw up, they take it away. Interesting concept.
Here is my thought - Those in the know tell us that teen brains are not fully developed. I suggest we leave the drinking age at 21 and change all the others to 21 too. Maybe a teen shouldn't be making a decision about going to war. Give em a few more years to mature and then decide. Maybe we are rushing them into adulthood and there are not ready. Maybe we are getting it all wrong. Just maybe, we need to rethink a few things.
When I think back to 21, I had been married a year and was 6 months pregnant. I thought I knew it all and that is the scary part. Took me many more years to realize how wrong I was. Kids have more information available to them today than ever before and it has made barely a dent. If you have passed the 21 year mark, you know what I mean. If you haven't, I pray you make that far. Then, you have a fighting chance...
