The Tripod

The debate over the Amethyst Initiative has been in the media spotlight frequently in the recent months. President Jones has been actively involved in the discussion in Connecticut due to his support of lowering the legal drinking age to 18. Jones' position is often frowned upon as a youthful cry for permission to act out and a direct opposition to the effort of Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD). MADD, which has taken a strong position against the lowering of the drinking age, argues that it will increase the number of drunk driving accidents. They argue that by lowering the drinking age, lives will be endangered.

It is important to remember that the issue of drunk driving and the issue of legal consumption of alcohol are entirely different. We will always be fighting the battle against drunk driving because, unfortunately, there will always be people who consume alcohol and then get behind the wheel. The best we can do about that is ensure that police enforce the law as best they can. Generally, in my experience, the 18 to 21 year old demographic is not made up of people who get behind the wheel after a night of drinking. At Trinity, they are the ones stumbling back to their dorm rooms laughing about being a little too tipsy. They are the ones passing out in the hallways. They are the ones being "TCERT-ed".

If the simple act of having a beer was legally acceptable for college students, people would be less hesitant to call for help when a peer suffers from alcohol poisoning. Binge drinking is a serious, wide spread problem across the country. By assuring people that a 911 call will not result in an arrest for illegal possession, we can put the stories of students dying in their dorms or the back rooms of frat houses in the past.

In addition, the argument that lowering the drinking age will make it easier for high school students to access alcohol makes little sense. In fact, we are currently going to school in the state notorious for the Farmington party, where parents were arrested for providing a keg to their children. The party forced state legislators to change the laws regarding when parents can give their own children alcohol. It is already easy for underage drinkers to access alcohol, as evident by the amount of alcohol consistently found on campus. Although it is easy to access, because it is a crime, students drink in an unmonitored environment, making it more dangerous.

By lowering the drinking age, it is difficult to reasonably foresee a rise in alcohol related deaths. To be completely blunt, how could the underage drinking problem get any worse? When the average Trinity student uses 'TCERT' in their everyday vocabulary and the average high school student can tell at least one story about someone they knew who drank too much, there is very little room for the problem to decline much further. However, if the legal drinking age were lowered to 18, there is a good chance that we could start to combat the dangers of underage drinking and allow all legal adults to drink responsibly.

Article Tools