A Lower Drinking Age Would Help Solve Irresponsible Drinking

The Frat Boy News Daily College Column
By the staff of The Lantern, the student newspaper of Ohio State University

We aren't breaking new ground when we say that in comparison to the liberties 18- to 20-year olds have, the ability to purchase alcohol is a ridiculous exclusion. We can get addicted to cigarettes and drive cars. We can voluntarily go to war, or be sent against our will. We choose our colleges and/or careers and can have sex with just about whoever we want.

We are, for all intents and purposes except one, treated as and considered to be adults. When we commit crimes, we are tried as such.

The law doesn't exactly keep us from getting alcohol. The law forbids it and prosecutes those caught. It doesn't prevent it. It can't. Instead of growing up with parents who can demonstrate and inculcate an atmosphere of responsible drinking, we make it taboo (for some) by outlawing it and making it part of an underground activity.

If you're lucky maybe you had an older sibling or by chance met good friends who held your hair back as you vomited in your dorm room toilet. They might have even made you get off the bathroom floor so you wouldn't freeze on the ice-cold tile.

Or maybe you remained in line with the law and never took a sip. You couldn't do it in high school and saw no purpose for it now. It isn't social - it's stupid, and you don't need to drink to have fun. Well, that's true, but you can do both at the same time.

Either way, everyone recognizes there is a drinking problem among college students. Binge drinking and drunken driving are but two of a larger set of issues bothering police authorities and university officials as the responsibility for such behavior is falling in their domains.

If we want to get at the heart of college drinking, we must talk about it in terms of experience. Sure, we're reckless, and in later years we will settle down and stop being quite so stupid. But before we got behind the wheel at age 16, we needed some experience and the state required we get it. Before going to Iraq, Afghanistan or Vietnam at age 18, they at least taught us how to shoot guns and how to avoid getting shot.

But when we were sent to college, in a world where alcohol is easily accessible regardless of the law, some of us took advantage of it and some of us made mistakes. Many college students come down from a few years of drunkenness after the unpleasant hangovers provide an experience too uncomfortable to make ridiculousness worth it. Experience helps provide this.

The Lantern does not believe immediately lowering the drinking age will solve the problem of irresponsible drinking. In fact, until parents take responsibility and help their "kids" learn without causing too much damage to themselves and others, we cannot even say lowering the drinking age is a good idea at all.

What we do support is consistency in the state's and parents' opinions that we are responsible for the consequences of our choices. Leadership, though, begins at home and for us to be responsible at any age, we need a little experience in it. That experience can begin earlier. The consequences of eschewing that responsibility on the mere hope age alone will provide wisdom are being felt.

This column was written by the opinion staff of The Lantern, student newspaper of Ohio State, and represents their views.