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The Sacramento Bee reports that the administrations of UC Berkeley and Stanford University are “considering” backing an initiative that seeks to lower the legal drinking age to 18. If they decide to back the Amethyst Initiative, they will join over 100 other colleges that hope a revised age to lawfully get smashed, as it’s called in legal circles, will address widespread problems that exist with the current law.
One of the arguments against the initiative that caught our eye is the idea that lowering the drinking age is synonymous with encouraging drunkenness. If that was the case, we wouldn’t own a pet snail—but we do, precisely because it’s illegal.
But on the other hand, some proponents of the initiative claim it’s not meant to make college less “fun,” only more “responsible.” This is an obvious violation of the second law of physics—anything that’s fun requires a total lack of responsibility (the first is, “anything that’s fun costs at least 8 dollars”).
In any case, we don’t think it’s prudent to make assumptions about the prevalence of binge drinking without any hard data—whether it seems reasonable to assume it will stay the same no matter the drinking age or not. But the problem won’t fix itself, either.
Image Source: Kevin Lawver under Creative Commons
Drinking age at 18? Sacramento State president says no [Sac Bee]
Tags:Amethyst Initiative, Drinking, pet snail, second law of physics
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Aug 31, 2008 at 9:04 am
My website, linked from this post, offers rebuttals to all the lame excuses for the drinking age.
Unfortunately, the California state constitution, Article 20 section 22 imposes the drinking age. The Legislature cannot repeal it, but the state constitution can be amended.
The key word in whether they should repeal the drinking age is THEY, and who the heck are THEY to decide whether somebody else can drink.
“The sale, furnishing, giving, or causing to be sold, furnished, or
giving away of any alcoholic beverage to any person under the age of
21 years is hereby prohibited, and no person shall sell, furnish,
give, or cause to be sold, furnished, or given away any alcoholic
beverage to any person under the age of 21 years, and no person under
the age of 21 years shall purchase any alcoholic beverage.”