Jeanna Duerscherl | The Roanoke Times

About the series

This is the second installment in an oocasional series about the effects of underage drinking on Virginia college campuses. Part one in the series focused on higher education leaders and how they view the Amethyst Initiative, which seends to renew public debate about the current age limit.

Part One

• The drinking age: A debate for the ages
• Rethinking 21: Western Virginia college presidents on the Amethyst Initiative

• From the Newsroom blog:"Under 21" explores the Amethyst Initiative and campus drinking
• Dan Casey column: Age-old debate on drinking continues

Message board

• The drinking age: What do you think?

Related

The Amethyst Initiative

Visit the Amethyst Initiative website

John McCardell, an alumnus and member of the board of trustees at Washington and Lee University, has been leading a national movement to lower the drinking age for the past five years. His argument is based on his belief that the 21-year-old drinking age has driven drinking by young people underground where they are more likely to drink irresponsibly.

Several national organizations -- including Mothers against Drunk Driving -- oppose changing the drinking age, citing a decrease in alcohol-related traffic fatalities since the age was changed a quarter century ago.

During a recent visit to Lexington to attend his son's graduation from W&L, McCardell defended his stance while acknowledging that a majority of Americans probably don't agree with him.

What's the next step that needs to be taken for this debate to gain real political momentum?

John McCardell: I think that the political question actually is not directly the drinking age but it is rather removing the impediments that stand in the way of debating the drinking age. And in my view there is one chief impediment and that is a provision in the 1984 law which says a state which sets the age lower than 21 forfeits 10 percent of its federal highway funds.

If the purpose of that provision was to stifle debate that purpose has been brilliantly achieved because there has been no serious debate on the state level over the last quarter of a century.

The highway bill is up for reauthorization currently in Congress ... this is the moment for us to ask ourselves whether we would be better off with that penalty -- or, as it's called in Washington, incentive -- removed. I'm pretty confident that we would see debates resuming on the state level in a much more serious and substantive way, absent that threat.

Is there anything new about the argument now that makes you think it will go somewhere?

JM: I think it has more to do with the environment than it does with the nature of the argument. ... Whether we like it or not, you are an adult in the eyes of the law at age 18. The current generation of young adults 18, 19 and 20, have no idea where 21 came from and to them it seems, as it should, absolutely arbitrary. ... This is a generation that turned out in record numbers last November to elect the first African-American president in American history. I doubt that we would hear that president say to them that they were smart enough and astute enough to elect him but they lacked the maturity and judgment to buy or consume a beer.

That's the incongruity that this generation doesn't understand. ...

The other environmental change is that, since we have been at war, we have seen a large number of young adults -- 18, 19 and 20 -- be placed in harm's way. And I will leave it to someone capable of occupying higher moral ground than I'm capable of occupying to say to the returning wounded 20-year-old combat veteran that we thank her for her service but no, doesn't she understand? She's not mature enough to consume a beer.

Isn't this the same group of young people, though, who you mentioned are dying because of irresponsible drinking in fraternity houses and apartments?

JM: I think what we need to consider there is that alcohol is a reality in the lives of young adults. It always has been. It is a presence. We can try to deny it. We can try to change the reality. Most of the rest of the world has come out in a different place on this question from where the United States, Indonesia, Mongolia and Palau have come out, which is at 21.

We spent the last quarter of a century trying to change the reality with very limited success. There's no question that fewer young people are drinking now than were drinking 25 years ago. But fewer adults of every age are drinking now than were drinking 25 years ago.

If the law were effective, none would be drinking. ... There's kind of a barbell effect at work here. Yes, fewer young adults are consuming alcohol. But those who are choosing to drink are drinking in more sizable and reckless and life-threatening numbers. ... I do think the environment needs to be credited to some degree at least with these consequences.

If I tell you often enough 'no no no no no no no no no' and tell you that if so much as a drop of alcohol crosses your lips all these horrible things are going to happen and yet you look around you and you see the rest of the world, you see a parental generation that was able legally to drink at age 18, and you don't see massive brain impairment, you don't see all these horrible things you were told would happen to you, you encounter the forbidden fruit phenomenon. And by forcing that consumption into the clandestine environment, you are prohibiting the possibility of education, of adult role modeling and of learning how to make responsible decisions about alcohol. How is that to be taught under the current law?

Is there not a danger, though, that because of this forbidden fruit phenomenon you have created a certain culture and then by making alcohol more readily available ... you will make the problem significantly worse?

JM: If we were to have measured the success of 21, in terms of drunk driving crashes, as of 1988, we would have declared the law an abject failure. Because drunk driving crashes went up in the several years following. So it takes a while for the effects of a law to be effectively measurable.

So whatever would happen in the two or three years immediately following an adjustment of the age, I would argue, indeed would insist, that that's not long enough to say whether this has been a success or a failure. But beyond that, as I said before, merely adjusting the age -- whether it's raising it to 21 or lowering it to 18 -- is going to result in a failed experiment.

The age is only one, and in my view a very small part, of how we address the issue of preparing young people to make responsible decisions about alcohol.

And so the Choose Responsibility proposal involves mandatory alcohol education, by which we mean not temperance lectures and scare tactics, but truly comprehensive education which deals with history, with culture, with chemistry, with biology, with effects, with social effects, legal effects, but that is modeled at least roughly on driver's education.

We don't assume a young person, once they reach driving age is simply able to operate an automobile. But we do pretty much assume that once a young person reaches legal drinking age they'll know how to consume alcohol. That's nuts.

So education and, I think, something -- to continue the driver's ed analogy -- a permit. Or as somebody has called it, a passport, that says you've had alcohol education, that you've observed the alcohol laws of the issuing state. And that you're committed to continue observing those laws going forward.

Is there any data, any research that says ... we can prove there is more dangerous drinking behavior because of the change in drinking age?

JM: I think we need to be very careful in establishing cause-and-effect relationships. And, frankly, I am not persuaded of there being as close a cause-and-effect relationship between the change in the age and the downward trend in traffic fatalities as some others believe. And I think if you asked them to explain to you how they derived that connection you won't understand a word they're saying.

But if you do, you'll discover that they basically apply a factor of .13 to the change in fatalities from one year to the next and that's how they calculate the number of lives saved. ... All of us or none of us here today might be one of those 800 or 900 or whatever it is that supposedly lives have been saved. But that is strictly an exercise in statistics and probability.

And it's bogus, in my view, in that regard. ... We have safer automobiles, we have designated drivers, we have a whole different cultural attitude toward drinking and driving from what we had 25 years ago. ... So cause-and-effect relationships involving the impulse to change the law, it seems to me, have always been a bit suspect.

When it comes to issues of binge drinking, I think again we need to be careful in asserting cause-and-effect relationships. But the work done by Henry Wechsler at the Harvard School of Public Health very clearly shows that binge drinking has become a much more serious public health issue in the years since the age was raised.

Now maybe that's a mere coincidence. But if you look at where the consumption is taking place ... I don't see those ambulances pulling up to restaurants. I don't see people being hauled off to the emergency room from student unions.

And, so, while I think we are properly cautious about establishing too close a cause-and-effect relationship, I absolutely reject the notion that the cause-and-effect relationship between the drinking age and the decline in alcohol-related traffic fatalities is intimate and the cause-and-effect relationship between the change in the drinking age and an uptick in binge drinking is utterly coincidental.

Is there room for compromise in this debate?

JM: Absolutely. Take the 10 percent out of the transportation budget and you are going to see ... a lot of creative thinking.

You'll see states maybe talking about adjusting the age of driving. Maybe you should be allowed to drink before you're allowed to drive. Maybe you should be allowed to consume only certain kinds of beverages. ... There's a whole range of possibilities that I think the states would be willing to pilot, would be willing to have the effects measured and would result in far better, maybe even best, practices [rather] than simply saying, 'Nope, nope, can't touch it. Same everywhere. One size fits all and it's never going to get any better than it is right now. It's really great now and any change we make is only going to make it worse.'

Anybody who believes that is living in a different planet, I think. And so it seems to me the risks of allowing states to pilot alternatives are minimal. And if those elected representatives in those states believe they are minimal, then we ought to trust their judgment. I don't believe blood is going to flow in the streets on the day the drinking age is adjusted. And I think it is equally likely that maybe some lives will be saved.

Public opinion still seems to, in the numbers I've seen, favor keeping the age as it is and there are multiple organizations of presumably well-meaning people who are resisting this. What is your explanation for that?

JM: I think any sort of change that is meaningful takes a while to bring about. The American Medical Association, of course, strongly supported prohibition. The American Medical Association opposes us. [The] American Medical Association, for that matter, also opposed Social Security, also opposed Medicare, also opposed Medicaid ... but I don't doubt their sincerity or their professional stature.

I also think it has to do how the question is asked. And the poll to which I think you're referring is an ABC/USA Today poll which asked the question, 'Should there be a federal law lowering the drinking age?' Now I may not have that exactly right but it's close. And 76 percent said no.

Well, I would answer no. Why? Because first of all that would require violation of the Constitution. You cannot pass a federal law adjusting the drinking age. We did it very trickily in '84 with the highway fund. But the Supreme Court is on record as saying the states set the drinking age. If that question were worded differently you might get a different response. ... That said I have little doubt I still represent the minority view. But I think the fact that this issue has gotten the attention that it's gotten over the last year is evidence that in the public's mind this is not a settled question and that not all the data are on one side.

And so I'm perfectly content if we're able to have the debate, if we can have the debate unimpeded, I believe my side, my argument, will prevail. But if it doesn't, well, then that is as it should be too. But let's at least have the debate without any threats hanging over anybody's head.

John McCardell, an alumnus and member of the board of trustees at Washington and Lee University, has been leading a national movement to lower the drinking age for the past five years. His argument is based on his belief that the 21-year-old drinking age has driven drinking by young people underground, where they are more likely to drink irresponsibly.

Several national organizations -- including Mothers Against Drunk Driving -- oppose changing the drinking age, citing a decrease in alcohol-related traffic fatalities since the age was changed a quarter century ago.

During a recent visit to Lexington to attend his son's graduation from W&L, McCardell defended his stance while acknowledging that a majority of Americans probably don't agree with him.