Why did the United States choose to create a law that increased the drinking age from 18 to 21? It’s simple: 18 year olds are simply not mature enough to handle the responsibility that comes along with consuming alcohol.

A rising number of college administrators are discussing changing campus drinking laws to allow 18 year olds to drink. Rather than shielding students from alcohol, they continue to bicker about how the present laws are thrusting students into the realm of binge drinking.

John McCardell, president emeritus of Middlebury College in Vermont, has rallied together other presidents and chancellors from various colleges to sit down and come up with a solution to stop binge drinking on campus. McCardell, along with 100 other college presidents, feels that the minimum drinking age of 21 years old isn’t working anymore and it’s time for a change. The presidents decided on a statement titled the “Amethyst Initiative.”

The people who have signed this document are taking a perilous step in asking politicians to reconsider switching the law back to age 18. McCardell and his fellow leaders believe that making alcohol illegal during Prohibition in the United States from 1920 to 1933 didn’t work, and it is not working today.

David Frankenberger, a student at City College, disagrees with the approach that the colleges are taking.

“I wouldn’t sign the statement if I had the chance,” Frankenberger said. “Lowering the age limit would only cause kids to start drinking at an even younger age.”

Lowering the drinking age could also raise the number of traffic fatalities and injuries as well. The U.S. “experimented” around the peak of the Vietnam War, by lowering the age limit to 18 and found increases in traffic injuries. So much that, by 1983, 16 states raised their drinking age back to 21, a move that saw an instant decrease in drinking and driving fatalities and the passage of the National Minimum Drinking Age Act of 1984, which established 21 as the legal age in all states.

Wendy Gomez, a nurse at the City College Student Health Center, believes that changing the age is not going to change the students’ drinking habits.

“No matter what the age is set to, people around these ages are going to drink because it has become socially acceptable,” Gomez said.

Rather than searching for alternative solutions to the problem, these administrators are looking for an easy way out so they don’t have to do their jobs. Lowering the drinking age to 18 would definitely alleviate colleges from their enforcement
responsibilities, but it is highly unlikely that it will encourage more responsible behavior.

“From a medical stand point, the younger you are when you start a substance that can be habit forming, the less likely you are to develop the tools to deal with things without the substance,” Gomez said.

It’s also important to note that if the drinking age were to be lowered, then a senior in high school would have access to alcohol, as well as the ability to buy it for all his or her friends. The bottom line is that college presidents are pushing in the wrong direction. The answer to the problem with campus alcohol isn’t to enhance its availability, but to discourage underage drinking.