Wednesday, October 8, 2008
Keep drinking age at 21: Manhattanville College poll
A recent poll by Manhattanville College, found that by a 2:1 margin, their surrounding community supports the 21 minimum drinking age law. This comes after the College's President signed onto the Amythest Initiative, a misguided proposal to lower to drinking age.
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7 comments:
If so many people support the drinking age, let it be imposed on them, not on somebody else under 21 to whom this deprivation of liberty is totally unacceptable.
Actually the driniking age was "imposed" on me when I was under 21, and thank God it was, so my brain would have all possibilities to develop properly. If protecting your brain/mind/body/life and the development of it is considered "deprivation of liberty" than there is a very misguided concept of truth. What about the "liberty" of unborn children who are forced to drink alcohol in the womb of their mothers??? Or the parent who gets a call from the hospital to come identify the body of their child who was killed by a drunk driver??? Or the friend you lose because they overdosed on alcohol at a college party???
That is what is "unacceptable"!
Kim, nothing you mentioned is prevented by the drinking age. You're emotional appeal is fallacious and disregards fact, logic, and reason. The current drinking age fosters an underground culture of binge drinking. Education, not laws, will prevent tragic deaths. Bring back liberty and true adulthood: Return the drinking age to 18-years old. No more second class citizenship for 18-20 year olds!
"You're emotional appeal is fallacious and disregards fact, logic, and reason. The current drinking age fosters an underground culture of binge drinking"...talk about fallacious. You are the one who doesn't know the facts. Studies show a raised drinking lowers drunk driving accidents. They also prove when the minimum drinking age was lowered, there was more binge drinking and more teenagers drinking simply because it was legal. You are the one who needs to learn the facts.
As for deprivation of liberty, hawgwash. We have become a society of "all about me." Lives taken by drunken teenagers...now that is deprivation of liberty.
Sassy 4250 wrote, "Studies show a raised drinking lowers drunk driving accidents. They also prove when the minimum drinking age was lowered, there was more binge drinking and more teenagers drinking simply because it was legal." I'm not sure what "studies" you've decided to cite in your elegantly researched critique of "Save Ferris" but I doubt it's the longitudal study conducted independently ( by that I mean researchers not in MADD's bankroll) by Rutgers and Baltimore University economists Peter Asch and David Levy. They reported that raising the drinking age to 21 slightly reduced fatal crashes by 18-20 year-olds at the expense of more deaths among 21-24 year-olds. The “legal drinking age has no perceptible influence on fatalities,” their exhaustive, federally-funded Journal of Policy Analysis & Management study concluded, “but inexperience in drinking is an apparent risk factor independent of age.”
Their findings were confirmed in a 2001 American Economics Association paper by Swarthmore and Maryland University economists Thomas Dee and William Evans. “The nationwide increases in MLDA (minimum legal drinking age) may have merely shifted some of the fatality risks from teens to young adults,” they conclude from analyzing multiple factors. Raising drinking ages from 19 to 21 cut 18-19 year-olds’ traffic deaths by 5% but increased fatalities among 22-23 year-olds by 8%. “The magnitude of mortality redistribution,” Dee/Evans report, “is quite large.”
These findings suggest the 21 drinking age doesn’t save lives; it merely shifts deaths, perhaps even increases them. Why? Because “learning by doing” is “an important component of teens’ maturation,” Dee/Evans note. Still, 40% of the drunken accidents that kill teens and 90% that kill children, the drunk driver is over age 21!!!
In summation, while the MADDness has infected many otherwise sound and rational Americans, many of us remain immune to their fear mongering politics and convenient untruths. And don't get me started on the injustice perpetuated upon 18-20 year olds as a result of a drinking age three years higher than the age in which they assume full legal responsibility for their actions. I might have to inject a heavy dose of truth into the veins of many a madd mother and I don't think they can handle it.
Tom Scilipoti
Author: UP All Night, Three Weeks Without My Cell Phone, and Curing the Maddness ( contract pending).
I'd like to point out that Germany universally allows people to drink beer and wine at 16, and schnaps at 18. Their highway fatality rates are considerably lower than those in the United States.
Who is anyone to tell me, a legal adult, that I am not allowed to put something into my own body that those 21 and up can? That is discrimination and that is wrong. I am now 21 as of last month and I began drinking both legally and illegally at 18 and I am no less intelligent or anything of the sort because of my drinking, it is not heavy and even if it was, it is MY body and my choice. Alcohol does not make you stupid nor is it an excuse for anyone's stupidity.
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