A Greenwich former college president is leading the charge to separate federal highway funds from drinking age limits and recommending that the federal drinking age be lowered to 18. It’s about time. I have been against this particular law since it was enacted when I was 18. The aftermath has been readily apparent to anyone who experiences college campus life since, binge drinking is up and alcohol related accidents have only mirrored demographic changes in population age bands. John McCardell heads the non profit group, Choose Responsibility.

“If you ask our opinion, yes we feel the drinking age should be 18,” McCardell said. “But state legislators will not have that debate until that provision is lifted because they don’t want to put that money at risk.”

McCardell said that a drop in alcohol-related fatalities after the drinking age was raised to 21 is not related to the changed law, but is instead attributable to increased awareness of the dangers of drunken driving and better enforcement.

“The decline had started before the law took place,” McCardell said. “I think if you asked somebody if they had a designated driver in 1984, they would look at you like you were from another planet.”

A member of the audience, Marty Sands of Greenwich, asked McCardell whether he thought surveys of college students that indicate underage students drink four or more times a week were accurate.

“Do you think that all freshman, sophomores, and juniors are breaking the law?” Sands asked.

McCardell said he could not prove that the higher drinking agewas making a majority of underage students into habitual drinkers, but he said that the current law wasn’t stopping underage drinking.

“I think that there is evidence that the vast majority of people have consumed alcohol by the time they are 21,” McCardell said.

More importantly, there has been a societal erosion of what universally has been accepted as the legal age of adulthood. Whether its courts that try children under 18 as adults, or banks seeking to rope parents into becoming legally responsible for debts incurred by 19 year olds, the concept of legal adulthood has become confusing. There has even been a movement to give voting rights to children under the age of 18. Restoring every legal aspect to a set age, like 18, would be the smart thing to do.

At 18, a person should become a legal adult, with access to voting, driving, drinking, smoking and all the responsibilities that come with it. There is no societal benefit to extend the childhood cocoon of zero responsibilities beyond 18, and conversely to remove that shield when it suits eager prosecutors.

source: The Advocate, Activist: Drinking age should be lowered, By Martin B. Cassidy, October 5 2007