It's Time To Lower the Drinking Age Back Down to 18

(First published 8th June 2014) - In the spring of 1983, I was a 16 year-old high school junior planning to attend William Paterson College in autumn, 1984, and took advantage of an opportunity to spend a day on campus with a friend enrolled at WPC.  Over 30 years later, I have no idea what classes I attended that day, but I have a distinct memory of going to lunch at Billy Pat’s Pub in the WPC Student Center.  Students and faculty filled the pub at lunchtime and enjoyed conversation and mentoring over a burger and a beer.

That’s right, students and faculty drank beer at lunch on campus.  Of course, at that time, the legal drinking age was 18, so almost every student on campus could enjoy a cold brew with their lunch before going back to class with same professors with whom they had been imbibing.  And I suspect that this was how it was on most campuses across America since the end of Prohibition some 50 years prior.

This was considered normal behavior at that time and it was great.  Students were able to interact with older adults and discuss anything from internships and job possibilities to current events.  Students practiced networking and polished their conversation skills without realizing it.

I did enroll at William Paterson, but by the time I arrived on campus about 18 months after that initial visit, the campus was dramatically changed; Billy Pat’s was closed at lunch time because the drinking age had been raised to 21 and, sadly, faculty were rarely seen in the Student Center.

While losing that faculty/student social interaction has hurt students, raising the drinking age has caused an even bigger problem:  Student drinking is no longer done in a controlled, public environment; instead, students binge drink at private parties.  In fact, According to the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse, underage drinking accounts for 17.5% ($22.5 billion) of consumer spending for alcohol in the United States (Joseph Califano Jr., "The Commercial Value of Underage and Pathological Drinking to the Alcohol Industry,"  (168 KB) National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University, May 2006).  Think about that for a moment, because underage drinkers tend to drink the cheapest beer they can find.  In other words, while some adults will spend hundreds of dollars on a good bottle of scotch or wine, underage kids drinking cheap beer still account for almost one fifth of all alcohol spending in America.  As a result, according to the Centers for Disease Control, from 2006-2010, underage drinking played a role in 4,173 deaths

(http://apps.nccd.cdc.gov/DACH_ARDI/Default/Report.aspx?T=AAM&P=f6d7eda7-036e-4553-9968-9b17ffad620e&R=d7a9b303-48e9-4440-bf47-070a4827e1fd&M=AD96A9C1-285A-44D2-B76D-BA2AE037FC56&F=AAMCauseGenderUnder21&D=H).

That said, it’s time for the state of New Jersey to consider lowering the drinking age back to 18.  Sure, the old arguments still stand – if one is old enough to vote, marry, stand trial, and serve in the military, one should certainly be permitted to have a glass of wine with dinner – but there’s more to it than that.  Drinking in a pub or tavern is far safer for students than binge drinking at a “kegger.”  Students don’t play drinking games in pubs, but beer pong, flip-cup, quarters, etc., are regular features of a college keg party.  Further, binge drinking in a public establishments is difficult with bartenders policing drinking and the cost of alcohol serving as a deterrent to students on a low budget.  Clearly, lowering the drinking age would decrease unsafe drinking activities.

The drinking age in much of the rest of the world is about 16 years of age.  And while the United States saw a decline in traffic accidents following the increase in the drinking age in 1984, the rate of traffic accidents and fatalities in the 1980s decreased even more in European nations whose drinking age remains under 21 (Barry M. Sweedler, "The Worldwide Decline in Drinking and Driving: Has It Continued?," Presentation for the 15th International Conference on Alcohol, Drugs and Traffic Safety in Stockholm (Sweden), www.ntsb.gov, May 2000).

Thus, the decline in accidents and deaths from drinking in the U.S. could be attributed to many factors, including safer automobiles and airbags, seat belt laws, increased awareness of the dangers of drinking and driving, and an increase in the number of college students living on campus and walking back to their dorms after drinking rather than driving.  Of course, ride-sharing apps have even eliminated the need for walking back to apartments and dorm rooms.  Students can safely return home even if they don't live on campus.

We need to treat adults like adults and give them the responsibility that they can handle.  We need to bring college student drinking back into public places rather than in illegal, private spaces.  The left constantly tells us that we should distribute condoms to minors in middle schools because students are having sex anyway, so isn’t it time we realize that because adult college students are drinking anyway, they’ll be safer lawfully drinking in regulated public places rather than at illegal keg parties?  I certainly think so!