Face Off: Should the drinking age be reconsidered? Yes.

Randy Dunn University President

Yes Current drinking law endangers under-agers

Two of our Characteristics of an MSU Graduate assert the importance of students engaging in ethical behavior and responsible citizenship, and in maintaining a healthy lifestyle. I believe our students-and many students at colleges and universities around the country-are able to fulfill these goals. If I didn't think this was the case, I would not have joined about 130 other presidents from across the nation in becoming a signatory to the Amethyst Initiative. I respect the wisdom, seasoned judgment, and decades-long experience of many of these higher education leaders-so when they issue a call such as this, it is compelling. To be clear at the outset, Amethyst is a call for discussion about drinking on campuses; it is not, as some headlines have mistakenly suggested, a demand to reduce the legal drinking age from 21 to 18, 19, or anything else. College and university presidents live continually among this population and we know the life-altering damage that alcohol can cause if used improperly at any age. (This issue is too complex for this kind of simple fix anyway.) With the legal drinking age at 21, most Murray State students are making healthy choices regarding alcohol-this is acknowledged in the accompanying counterpoint column by Judy Lyle, who is doing great work for us in Health Services in this area-and those smart choices come from education and information that young adults learn, not some switch that turns on at age 21.

Let me try to explain some of the added reasons why I think the time has come for thoughtful, sustained debate and discussion on "Legal 21".

On so many of our campuses-not just at Murray State, but in places all over the country-we have a culture of drinking that has not lessened with all of the enforcement and education that has taken place to curb alcohol use. College students who wish to drink are doing so. But they are doing so in a way that promotes binge drinking, clandestine drinking, and drinking to intoxication whenever an opportunity to do so arises (and to drink faster to reduce any risk of getting caught). This is a problem and is what I worry about at night as a university president. It strikes me that Legal 21 may be encouraging the very kind of illegal and dangerous behavior it was meant to curtail.

To be honest, my bigger worry when it comes to drunk driving is people like myself-middle-aged guys who go out at night or on the weekend and try to relive their younger days out on the lake or at a ball game or wherever. Curbing dangerous behaviors and punishing recklessness involving alcohol always has to be foremost-no matter what the age of the offender-and MSU's work to reduce high-risk drinking with the campus population must continue. I signed on with Amethyst because I hope it can lead to some honest, open, and forthright dialogue about students' responsibility and accountability. I believe that the vast majority of our MSU students have proven themselves as young adults and that they can learn how to drink responsibly-complying with all existing laws against public intoxication, drunk driving, and everything else associated with drinking as an adult. They can drive, vote, get married, go to war, enter into contracts, pay taxes, decide on their own health care, and pretty well exercise all of those privileges that society confers upon "adults"-but according to federal law (which has become the basis for Legal 21 in every state)-they cannot be trusted to consume alcohol in any circumstance or situation. To me, that seems counterintuitive. Unfortunately, the research is not clear on the question of Legal 21's effectiveness in preventing accidental deaths, alcohol abuse, and other negative outcomes of drinking. There is a body of research that suggests that setting the drinking age at 21 has reduced underage and binge drinking over the past quarter-century. However, there is also a sufficient body of research in the other direction to call these findings into account. Of recent vintage is research done by the National Bureau of Economic Research and authored by Jeffrey Miron (an economist at Harvard) and Elina Tetelbaum (at Yale Law School) that negates any correlation between adoption of the Federal Uniform Drinking Age Act (which essentially forced all states to have a minimum drinking age of 21) and a reduction in alcohol-related traffic deaths. Alcohol-related traffic fatalities in Puerto Rico, where the legal age is 18, dropped by 11% last year according to research cited by Amethyst.

Any claim that "science" is unequivocally on the side of a specific drinking age is wrong. Half of the peer-reviewed studies on the effect of the drinking age on fatalities show a positive correlation, while half the studies show no correlation. Much more study and targeted research needs to happen. No matter, the research has not been an impediment to drinking for the 19- or 20-year-old college student who wishes to drink. To quote David Joyce, President of Ripon College: "Statistics can be useful, but if the Weather Channel says it's sunny while a storm rages outside, I'm inclined to trust my eyes." Murray State University must continue its numerous education programs around alcohol and the problems of abuse. We have an especially fine program in our Health Matters for Students series. MSU is further involved in peer-to-peer training, a community training partnership, and we've actively undertaken grant writing for this purpose (receiving funding from the Kellogg Foundation and Anheuser-Busch). The University's enforcement efforts remain important as well. But the key to countering problems with alcohol is education, and such is the mission of a university. Enforcement must continue to be sure, although Legal 21 casts us much more in the role of police officers in places where our jurisdiction is questionable. I don't know what the results of a national discussion and debate on Legal 21 will be-but I do know there are no easy answers to this. We have not changed the culture of drinking that is pervasive on many of our campuses today. I also know that stifling debate on issues is not healthy behavior-for universities or democracies. In the words of President Bill Durden of Dickinson College (a co-author of Amethyst's presidential statement), "colleges and universities fulfill their democratic mission of forwarding rational conversation and opposing anything that shuts it down." Because of this-and the other reasons cited above-I felt it my responsibility as a president to support the Amethyst Initiative. Let the public policy discourse ensue…as it should.