Drinking: an option for adults of any age

By: The Traveler Editorial Board

Posted: 8/29/08

"It's time to rethink the drinking age," proclaim the 129 signatories of the Amethyst Initiative petition.

These petitioners are not eager-to-drink 18-year-olds. They are well-educated and presumably conscientious administrators, including the presidents of Duke, Dartmouth and Johns Hopkins.

Nor is the Amethyst Initiative a sloppy student movement with a trippy title. It's a thoughtful, concerned campaign that began when a group of college presidents "discovered a common desire to reopen public debate over the drinking age," according to the Amethyst Initiative Web site.

Those who have signed the petition believe "21 is not working as well as the public may think."

According to the Amethyst Initiative official statement, a culture of dangerous, clandestine binge drinking has developed among college students.

Whether such a binge drinking culture has developed is debatable.

Certainly, on- and off-campus observation at the UA seems to indicate that a significant proportion of our own student population has, at some point, consumed more alcohol than could be called prudent.

But that observation is just that - observation. And statistics regarding youthful consumption of alcohol- if you look in the right places - are encouraging.

For example, according to statistics collected for the National Institute on Drug Abuse, the proportion of non-drinkers among college students in the U.S. recently reached a record-breaking all-time high.

Perhaps students are finally figuring out that alcohol is not required to have both a meaningful and an entertaining college experience.

But regardless of whether a culture of binge drinking poses "increasing risks to young people," as the members of the Amethyst Initiative claim, the prestige and credibility attached to those members indicate that the direction of the underage alcohol debate has shifted.

Instead of patronizing students with admonitions that imply college students do not know and act in their own best interests, the signees of the Amethyst petition are engaging the 18- to 21-year-old adults on their campus as adults.

This is a triumph for those students - but only for those students - who have proven themselves, either by abstinence or responsible drinking - to be adults.

For those students who abuse alcohol, this directional shift in the drinking debate represents only the extent of the exasperation adults feel when their hard-earned wisdom is ignored - because the Amethyst Initiative signatories are still patronizing over-drinkers by implying that legal recourse is necessary to dampen the allure of the illegality of drinking.

And over-drinkers repeatedly show that they deserve to be patronized because they insist on engaging in a behavior that has been shown to not be in their best interest.

Adults, whether they are 18 or 80, uniformly take responsibility for themselves. Central to the experience of being drunk is the blissful impossibility of taking responsibility.

Being an adult should be its own reward. But it's still nice that the highly-regarded individuals who comprise the Amethyst Initiative think those of us who act our age should be able to reward ourselves with a glass of wine at the end of a long, hard day.