MADD: Credible Opposition at Last
U.S. National Alcohol Policy Attacked by College Presidents
Aug 20, 2008
Prohibition might have been music to the ears of fundamentalists of several stripes, but it also played directly into the hands of organized crime. Without Prohibition, it might be argued, organized crime would not have had such fertile ground in which to grow and prosper. That, alone, was a distinctly severe negative of denying the American public the right to sample the fruit of the grape which was, after all, something Jesus--pinnacle of the nation's majority Christian faith--made from water.
Forbidden Fruits are Always the Most Desirable
However, the era of MADD has been equally destructive, according to influential college presidents. It hasn't given us a new organized crime family; it has given us a couple of generations of young people to whom alcohol was such a demonized substance that, like teens everywhere and for millennia, our teens just had to sample it. Sample it? No, they had to overindulge, a fact that has been plaguing colleges and their administrations for years, the college presidents note. If something was THAT BAD, the 18-to-21-year-olds reasoned--as reported in articles on several websites including that of the New York Sun--a whole lot of it must be THAT GOOD. Binge drinking, since the advent of MADD's single-minded attack on one of the oldest foods known to man, has grown to epidemic proportions.
This week, 100 college presidents banded together under the rubric of the Amethyst Initiative to provoke national debate aimed at lowering the drinking age to 18. Quoted in a WBZTV report , John McCardell, former president of Middlebury College in Vermont, noted, "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."
Students agree. One, interviewed for the same report, noted logically that exposure to alcohol at a younger age would eliminate much of the mystique that encourages college students to brag about getting trashed.
Colleges: Educators or Enforcers?
In addition, Duke University President Richard Brodhead wrote a statement for Amethyst Initiative's website that notes that the 21-year-old age "pushes drinking into hiding, heightening its risks." It also prevents school officials "from addressing drinking with students as an issue of responsible choice."
MADD, not surprisingly, accused the colleges of "waving the white flag," that is, giving in to student pressure about alcohol. They have, however, missed the point. Colleges long ago waved the white flag concerning other 'majority' issues, including on-campus co-habitation, the concept of in loco parentis and more. It is not surprising that they would like to get out of the 'beer cop' mode as well.
The presidents have not called unilaterally for a lowering of the drinking age, but rather seek to open national debate, according to a report in the New York Sun. At the very least, they call into question the tactics that forced nationwide acceptance of the higher age limit; federal highway funding withdrawals made it all but mandatory for any state with public highways to accede to the higher age limit, a sort of tarmac blackmail. The college presidents also note that while adults under 21 can vote and serve in Iraq, risking life and limb, they are told they are too immature to have a beer. In addition, the presidents point out, forcing the variably 'legal' 18-21 year-olds to fake IDs to have a beer (but not to join the Army) causes many to make ethical compromises that erodes respect for law, according to the Sun report.
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