TERRE HAUTE — Another debate taking hold across the nation has nothing to do with the upcoming presidential elections.
More than 100 university presidents and chancellors have signed the Amethyst Initiative, a statement encouraging legislators to evaluate the effectiveness of the 21-year-old drinking age.
Local university presidents have not signed the statement and have all said they need more information, but for some Valley residents, more information wasn’t necessary.
“I think 18 is too young of an age to be drinking,” said Indiana State University freshman Brooke Thompson, 18, of Greenwood, “because [people] are still starting out at college and need to be thinking about their education.”
Zach Gilles, also an 18-year-old ISU freshman from Greenwood, also thinks the drinking age should stay 21, he said.
“If you lower it, then everybody’s going to do it,” he said.
Proponents of the initiative say the 21-year-old drinking age is not working and has developed a culture “of dangerous, clandestine ‘binge-drinking’ — often conducted off-campus,” according to the Amethyst Initiative Web site, www.amethystinitiative.org.
Since the initiative began receiving national attention, it has somehow turned into a debate of lowering the drinking age to 18, something initiative supporters said are false.
“The presidential statement … by design does not take a policy position regarding establishing a drinking age,” the Amethyst Initiative and Choose Responsibility blog post stated. “… What the signers of the Amethyst Initiative have asked for is an informed and dispassionate public debate over the effects of the 21-year-old drinking age.”
This blog was posted Thursday in response to comments made to the media from Laura Dean-Mooney, national president of Mothers Against Drunk Driving.
“We are against lowering the 21 minimum drinking age,” said Kitty Greene, executive director for MADD Indiana. “We know that the 21 minimum drinking age law saves 1,000 lives a year [in traffic fatalities].
“We are about eliminating drunk driving and we know that lowering the drinking age would make this so much worse.”
Dugger carpenter Jeremy Neff, 29, echoed those sentiments Thursday evening as he sat outside the Verve.
“There’s more risk of kids getting drunk at a younger age and a higher number of teens getting in wrecks would be more of a problem,” he said. “Lowering the age is like asking for more trouble.”
Greene said lowering the drinking age would make a “college problem a high school problem” because there are high school seniors who are 18. Although MADD acknowledges an alcohol problem among college campuses, Greene said they encourage other ways to deal with the problem such as increasing enforcement and education.
MADD is prevalent throughout elementary, middle and high schools around the nation and it also participates at various university health fairs. To increase its visibility and awareness, it has gone a step further with University MADD or UMADD.
Though, there isn’t a UMADD in Indiana yet, Greene said plans are in the works to get it implemented. In the meantime, MADD is encouraging the public to reach out to any university officials they know who have signed the initiative and ask them to remove their names, Greene said, as well as discouraging any other university officials from signing it.
Tom Johnson is an ISU psychology professor, member of the Research Society on Alcoholism and member of the Division of Mental Health and Addiction, Indiana Addiction Planning Council, Prevention Subcommittee. He has been studying college drinking for about 17 years.
Johnson said changing the drinking age from 21 would not serve the purpose the Amethyst Initiative is trying for because of three things: access, culture and biology.
Similar to what Greene referenced in making a college problem a high school problem, Johnson said if the drinking age were lowered, access would be opened up to much younger people because “teens often get alcohol from older peers,” which would most likely increase drinking among middle and high school students.
Danny Johnson, a 21-year-old ISU senior from Elkhart, believes that could be a problem and could lead to high school students drunk or hung over at school, he said, but still couldn’t decide if lowering the drinking age is a good idea.
“There’s a lot that goes into it because if [the age] drops, you will have a lot less problems with minor consumption, but have to deal with kids who aren’t mature enough,” he said as he enjoyed a beer at lunch with his friends Friday at the Ballyhoo. “When you’re underage [and you drink], you have to sneak around and you control yourself better … It could go either way, it just comes down to the individual and if they can handle being the legal age to drink.”
Many argue lowering the drinking age shouldn’t be a problem in the United States because there are lower ages in other countries, but Tom Johnson said the United States doesn’t have the culture to support a lower age.
“Just letting people drink at a young age is no guarantee that you will or will not have problems with alcohol, it’s what the culture teaches about alcohol,” he said. “… The culture of drinking in the U.S. is such that if we lower the drinking age, it’s not going to be a positive step. We don’t have a culture that teaches moderation in drinking.”
Lastly, Tom Johnson said biology is a huge reason not to change the drinking age because some research shows brains aren’t fully developed until around age 25.
“Young people tend to be more impulsive and less likely to make thoughtful decisions about any sort of risky behavior,” he said. “… Given that the brains are still developing, what happens when you put alcohol into there? There’s a lot of concern about that, that in fact, may inhibit or kind of interfere with that developmental process.”
Despite the arguments against lowering the age, 24-year-old Brian Mifflin, an ISU sophomore, thinks the age should be lowered.
“So many people are arrested under 21 [for drinking], and still a large percent drink anyway, so obviously the laws aren’t changing anything,” he said Friday as he had lunch with Danny Johnson and Scott Dewey, a 21-year-old ISU senior from Lake Tahoe. “If they want to stop drunk driving, they should raise the age to drive.”
Dewey agreed about lowering the age, but not for the same reason.
“I think it’s a good idea because it’ll make people more responsible,” he said. “Plus, they can go fight for their country, but they can’t have a beer?”
Crystal Garcia can be reached at (812) 231-4271 or crystal.garcia@tribstar.com.
Check it out
• For more information about UMADD or MADD, call 1-800-247-6233, or visit www.madd.
org/in.
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Valley residents offer opinions on lowering legal drinking age
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