The Paradox of "21"

The bouncer is my weekend nemesis, and not a popular man among college students in general. For good reason. We fear that, despite our crafty fake IDs, he will not admit us unto the sacred tavern at which we have decided to try our luck. Seniors, of course, are above such immature fears; they are beyond the drinking age.

The infantilizing number 21 has done more to enfeeble young adults and to feed juvenile behavior among them than any other piece of legislation that has ever been enacted. When people are excluded from drinking, they are prohibited from the bar and club scene, which represents American social life. Even though those under 21 frequent such establishments, it is by definition a place that they were lucky to get into. They're not real members of the club. They're kids. And kids suck.

Last fall, Christopher Buckley, the editor of Forbes' FYI magazine, was the "honored" speaker at the annual Yale Daily News banquet. As recounted in the Nov. 22, 1994 New York Times, he was astonished to find the newspaper's editors absolutely smashed at the event--throwing up in the bathroom, unconscious around the dais. Was the problem a generation gap? Only in the sense that Mr. Buckley was unfamiliar with the contemporary college scene.

When he was 18 and at Yale, the Connecticut drinking age was still 18. The states had received the power to set their own laws with respect to intoxicating liquors from the 22nd Amendment, which was enacted in 1933 in order to repeal the 18th [prohibition] Amendment of 1919. Eighteen made for a sensible age then, and was even more coherent with government policy when the 26th amendment, which guarantees 18-year-olds the right to vote, passed in 1971.

The same forces that had pushed the failed prohibition into effect were still at work. They forced the establishment of blue laws and high drinking ages in many states (including Massachusetts), all designed to limit the spread of alcohol, mostly due to concerns about dissolute behavior. More recently, the national government has re-established alcohol policy along these lines supported by the forces of conservative moralism in coalition with liberal do-gooders (Mothers Against Drunk Driving, for example).

This is not really an issue of states' rights. Even if it was, the fundamentally backwards and politically dominant Republican Party would be sure to leave the drinking age question off of its list of complaints of over-reaching federal intervention. Note the decision of Governor William F. Weld '66 not to campaign for his party's nomination. Republicanism today is dominated by an insular morality which would override any such notion as economic libertarianism, just as the rhetoric of Gingrich and Gramm dominates that of Weld and Wilson.

Not uncharacteristically, the federal government adopted a flawed policy. In 1984, a national minimum drinking age was indirectly set by Congress at 21 by threatening the states. If that restriction on drinking did not become law, the U.S. would withhold highway construction and maintenance funding: five percent the first year, 10 percent each year afterward. Thus the current drinking age was induced, rather than ordered upon states. Not surprisingly, all 50 states have a drinking age of 21. Money talks.

There is, however, a serious quagmire. The youth of America is substantially less mature than its companions around the world. At 18, a U.S. citizen is man or woman enough to vote, fight in the military, drive a car, buy cigarettes and pornography and be financially independent. Yet is he or she not enough of an adult to imbibe alcohol? That is an absurd notion. Either 18 translates to full citizenry or it doesn't.

Unfortunately, it doesn't and it cannot. For all the frustration that college-age students feel (despite the fact that alcohol seems to flow freely enough), the national drinking age cannot be lowered to 18 for a multiplicity of reasons.

First, the federal government lacks direct control of the drinking age. It can encourage and bait the states, but ultimate power lies in the states' legislatures.

Second, a national minimum drinking age has become necessary. A condition not envisioned by those who ended prohibition, returning control of alcohol policy back to the states in the process, was people driving while intoxicated. This is a problem of the greatest magnitude. It has been lessened by the national minimum drinking age by ensuring consistency among the states' laws. Those between 18 and 21, therefore, now gain no advantage by crossing state boundaries to drink--they only get to drive home later that night.

Third, it would be fundamentally unpolitic (and there fore impossible) for the federal government to induce a national drinking age of 18. Even if the funding enticement was reformed in such a way, many states dominated by conservative interests would maintain a drinking age of 21. Thus the same problem of incongruity among the states and the inevitable fatalities.

Should we lower the drinking age to 18? Most definitely. Can we? The answer is a decided no. There is no easy answer. Abandoning the national minimum drinking age would cause a tremendous trade-off in human lives that just is not worth the cost. In the final analysis, American society is destined to suffer from its own immaturity.