Argument Against Lowering the Legal Drinking Age
Argument Against Lowering the Legal Drinking Age
It is estimated that underage drinking costs the US $58 billion each year in accidents, crime and hospitalizations. An estimated one-third of Americans abstain from drinking alcohol or liquor. The number of college binge drinkers in the 1999 Harvard study (44 percent) was the same as in the 1993 study. In the Harvard study, 0.6 percent of respondents required medical attention for alcohol overdoses. This could equal 30,000 such instances a year when applying the number to the nation's entire collegiate population. On September 13, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology reached a $4.75 million legal settlement with the parents of a student who died from an alcohol overdose in 1997. Scott Krueger, an 18-year-old freshman, fell into an alcohol-induced coma after drinking an excessive amount of alcohol at a university fraternity pledge function, and died three days later. The settlement comes at a time when underage drinking on college campuses appears to be spiraling out of control, with an increasing number of drinking-related incidents and fatalities.
For instance a recent study conducted by the Harvard School of Public Health College on the drinking habits and trends of college students found that 44 percent of students in 1999 were binge drinkers. The study defined a binge drinker as a male who consumes five drinks or a female who consumes four drinks in a row at least once in a two-week period. The study involved over 14,000 students from 119 universities. It also found that 19 percent of college students refrained from drinking alcohol last year -- an increase from 13 percent in 1993 -- but that nearly 24 percent of college students consumed enough alcohol to be classified as frequent binge drinkers. As staggering as these numbers are, new findings indicate that the use and abuse of alcohol starts years before youths enter college.
According to the American Medical Association, over 10 million individuals under the legal drinking age of 21 regularly consume alcohol, and that the average male tries alcohol at age 11. Demanding that parents, as legal guardians, must stop their underage children from drinking alcoholic beverages, numerous states have passed "social host" and "adult responsibility" laws, which hold parents and adults responsible for the actions of supervised minors. Still other states and jurisdictions have gone farther. If convicted under Minnesota's Zero Adult Providers law, adults and parents can be fined, jailed and sued...