A new law may make it OK for 18-year-olds to hit the bottle.
Soon your college kid may be legally hitting keg parties.
College presidents from Duke, Dartmouth, and Ohio State are asking government to lower the drinking age to 18 from 21, saying the current law encourages dangerous binge drinking on campus.
The movement called the Amethyst Initiative was started by a former president of Middlebury College in Vermont, John McCardell, who says: "This is a law that is routinely evaded. It is a law that the people at whom it is directed believe is unjust and unfair and discriminatory." The group may even start publishing newspaper ads to promote their efforts.
And while they don't outright ask the drinking age be lowered, their plan calls for "an informed and dispassionate debate" over the issue and the federal highway law that made 21 the national drinking age by denying money to any state that refutes the trend.
But the group makes clear the current law isn't working, citing a "culture of dangerous, clandestine binge-drinking," and noting that while adults under 21 can vote and enlist in the military, they "are told they are not mature enough to have a beer." Also, "by choosing to use fake IDs, students make ethical compromises that erode respect for the law."
And even though schools like Syracuse, Tufts, Colgate, Kenyon, and Morehouse support the organization, it should come as no surprise that public outrage is also mounting.
Mothers Against Drunk Driving is adamant that lowering the drinking age will lead to more fatal car crashes and says colleges are "misguided" and "deliberately misleading" the public and is even encouraging parents to reconsider sending their kids to colleges that support lowering the drinking age.
"As the mother of a daughter who is close to entering college, it is deeply disappointing to me that many of our educational leaders would support an initiative without doing their homework on the underlying research and science," M.A.D.D. national president Laura Dean-Mooney said. "Parents should think twice before sending their teens to these colleges or any others that have waved the white flag on underage and binge-drinking policies."
The only thing both college presidents and M.A.D.D. agree on is that alcohol abuse by college students is a huge problem.
And the stats don't lie: 40% of college students reported at least one symptom of alcohol abuse or addiction. And one study has estimated more than 500,000 full-time students at colleges suffer drinking-related injuries every year.
And according to a recent Associated Press study, 157 college-age people, 18 to 23, drank themselves to death between 1999 and 2005.
But representatives from Amethyst Initiative insists that students will drink no matter what, but do so more dangerously when it's illegal.
And although Duke President Richard Brodhead declined to comment, he wrote on the Amethyst Initiative's Web site that the 21-year-old drinking age "pushes drinking into hiding, heightening its risks."
"I'm not sure where the dialogue will lead, but it's an important topic to American families and it deserves a straightforward dialogue," said William Trout, president of Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee, who has signed the statement.
Would you send your child to a college that supported lowering the drinking age?
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