Consider Lily

Ok ladies, strap on your safety apparatus of choice and settle in for a little conflict. Recently 100 University presidents signed a petition to have the legal drinking age lowered from 21 to 18. The proposal has evoked passionate controversy and prominent and intelligent men and women are digging their heels in on both sides of the debate. Do you think a young man, who is eligible to be drafted at the age of 18, should also be allowed to have a beer? Or do you believe lowering the drinking age will fuel the already out of control binge drinking that happens amongst teenagers and college students? Where do you stand?

I can’t answer right now, because I’m drunk.

Hee. Just jokin’!

I am excited to see how this “discussion” develops…but I’m too nervous to be the first one to post…(those of you who know me realize that I’m never early to anything!).

Has anyone seen a commercial for “Girls Gone Wild” videos? Good heavens, let’s RAISE the drinking age to 25!

Okay, for real, I don’t know what these college presidents are thinking. Maybe someone can explain it to me. But this is what we know…consuming alcohol, for Christians and non-Christians alike, requires a great sense of responsibility and foresight. This, hopefully, kicks in more and more as you mature. A LOT of maturing happens between 18 and your lower to mid 20’s, if you ask me. For example, I have occasionally had babysitters for my kids that were high schoolers. For the most part we hire the brilliant college girls that abound in our town, but we have known a few high schoolers that were very sweet girls and had them babysit. There is a huge difference! When an older college girl sits for us, I usually come home to a relatively clean house, and kids in bed. When high school girls have babysitted for us, sweet as they have been, I walk in the door and follow the trail of toys, find maraconi dried up in a pot, and the children in bed with wrong or no pajamas, or they’re still awake at 10:00. These girls meant well, but they are not quite mature enough to handle my house full of munchkins. At 18, I think we all can admit we lacked some foresight. I chose a college I couldn’t afford and my husband is still paying it off. (Sorry honey!) I chose a major I’ve never really used and never wanted to get my masters in, as it required. Neither can all 18 year olds foresee the dangers of drunkenness, impaired decision making, promiscuity, and drunk driving, all with devastating consequences. We could talk about responsible and thoughtful decisions on consuming alcohol for Christians, but I know that’s probably a different blog. I’ll stick to topic. I just don’t see one positive thing coming from this! I would sign a petition to slightly raise the drinking age, but I realize law-makers aren’t asking me!

Good point about maturity, Jenn - that makes me think a bit about my gut reaction of “of course we should lower it!” I agree that there’s a huge degree of maturing that happens between 18 and 21. I also agree that people deal with alcohol in much better and much healthier ways when they’re more mature. My problem there, though, is that a lot of people disregard the drinking age. By the end of high school, a huge majority of my class drank. The problem, though, was that they made horrible decisions in their attempts to hide that they were drinking. My classmates went to seedy areas of town trying to buy alcohol. They dealt with seedy people in attempts to get fake IDs. Once we got to college, people attached themselves to sketchy frat guys in attempts to get alcohol, which just gave binge-drinking culture another claim on kids. Hiding puts kids in bad situations which could have been avoided if they were allowed to buy alcohol without having to hide it. On top of that, if kids hide the fact that they’re drinking, they’re likely to drink in situations where there are no adults around to supervise them, to lie to their parents about where they are, and to drive after they drink in an attempt to hide the fact that they were drinking in the first place.

I’m DEFINITELY not saying that the law should be changed just because kids break it. But I am saying that I’m more concerned about the unsafe situations created by trying to hide the fact that you’re drinking (and which could be avoided by a lower drinking age) than I am about kids being legally not allowed to drink. As a practical matter, I honestly don’t think that almost anyone who wants to drink underage is really deterred by the higher drinking age. In fact, I think that the higher drinking age gives underage drinking a feeling of rebellion, which really encourages alcohol abuse in high school and college students who are trying to figure out who they are. They end up drinking anyway, but in more dangerous ways than they would otherwise.

(Cringes, waiting for the tar and feathers)

I don’t mean to be a Debbie Downer, but I feel like our culture has blown it in this area in general. Panning back from the specific issue of the legal drinking age, it seems like parents and churches have conditioned their kids to do all of the sneaking/hiding/rebelling Sally described. And in that mess we lost the concept of moderation … that the alcohol itself isn’t the problem — it’s the drunkenness that leads to bad news.

This is where I’m coming from: I’ve talked to some friends about this issue, and they seem to fall into two different camps. On one side are the people whose parents hid liquor themselves, shunned against it, talked badly about people who did drink, and warned their children to NEVER take a sip, or else. On the other side are those whose parents either drank moderately or not at all, but didn’t make a big deal of it either way. They reinforced the “Just Say No” mantra taught by the schools, but were open to conversations about why people enjoy alcohol, and why so many people abuse it. What I found was that, by and large, the people whose parents had blacklisted alcohol (and usually without much explanation) were the ones who ran to alcohol in college. That’s a predictable setup for us humans, who are prone to do what we’ve been instructed not to (see Genesis 1).

So all that goes to say, I think lowering the drinking age might have positive results if we gave it a whole generation to settle out and create a new culture and attitude about alcohol and how to behave moderately. I can see a much more temperate culture where people drink alcohol but not to drunkenness. But immediately, I could see 18 year olds not thinking at all about moderation and just loving the new freedom and abusing it even more. So, since we’ve already messed up so much with attitudes and lust over alcohol, I kind of vote to keep it at 21 but have Christians be the example of moderation — enjoying a beer or a glass of wine (celebration and medicinal properties are two examples we see of this in the Bible), and then stopping. NOT getting drunk. That seems like the best, yet hardest to achieve on the whole, option to me.

Sally,

You won’t see any tar and/or feathers coming from me. I think your argument is quite powerful and accurate (you should be a lawyer!). In fact, the hesitancy I have about raising my hand in favor of lowering the limit is actually addressed by what Allie mentions about 18 year olds possibly abusing their new found freedom. More on that in a minute.

I was raised in a home where alcohol was absolutely off-limits. My parents had no double standard. They didn’t drink and they made it clear that I was not to drink. Contrary to Allie’s suggestion, however, I had no great desire to rebel against my parents standard. In fact, my desire to please them kept me not only from drinking, but also from being in environments where that would be an option. For the record, I had a NORMAL relationship with my folks. I wasn’t perfect and I rebelled in other ways, but drinking wasn’t that enticing. As a side note (shout out to mom and dad) I think they did a good job of making it clear it was off-limits without sensationalizing it.

SOOO, back to the possibility of 18 year olds abusing their new freedom. I think changing the legal drinking age should be coupled with stiffer penalties should they choose to drive drunk. 18 year olds should be held to a standard that would compel them to make smart choices. As Jenn said, they may not inherently be making decisions at the same level of responsibility as their slightly older/wiser counterparts (although there are PLENTY of 21 year olds…or 61 years olds for that matter….who make irresponsible choices). In order to ASSIST 18 year olds in making wise, safe decisions, I do think the penalties for abuse should be more extreme.

Okay, so I did a little homework. While it may seem plausible to some that a lower drinking age would eliminate some of these poor choices you talked about, statistics show that is just not true. When we raised the drinking age from 18 to 21 in 1975, we reduced the number of alcohol related driving fatalities. From what I read, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration says so, the CDC, the Surgeon General, and so on, all concurring that lives have been saved, estimated at 25,509 lives. In 1999, New Zealand experimented with lowering their drinking age to 18, and it increased their alcohol related crash rate just among 18 and 19 year olds by 12% for males, 51% for females, and also significantly raised it for 15-17 year olds. (Are we thinking that the 18 year olds who hang out with the 15-17 year olds are not going to be constantly supplying younger kids with alcohol?) I could go on, but the research I read all indicates that a higher drinking age SAVES LIVES. I’m sure that anyone who has lost a loved one to drunk driving would strongly agree.

I also will have to respectfully disagree with the logic of legalizing activity under the “they’re doing it anyway” argument. I know you probably don’t mean to extrapolate this argument into other issues, but I have to point out the slippery slope this creates. Should we legalize pot? They’re already doing it. Should we legalize prostitution? They’re already doing it and we could tax them. And obviously, when it comes to teaching my kids about sex, I won’t be the Mom who hands the pill or condoms to my kids, because they’re all already doing it anyway. I know that’s not what you guys were specifically saying, but I feel like it’s worth pointing out.

Overall, I understand the argument being made, but I think the facts support that the opposite is true.

Thanks for the statistics, Jenn, as I was wondering about those! When I served as Legal Counsel to a state government, we often had issues like this come up and I think it is important to consider the evidence that is out there. I would also agree that changing a law “just because people are already doing it” makes me nervous because there are so many other “illegal” activities that this line of logic would, seemingly, apply to as well. I think the question about changing a law (with an age limit) regarding any topic really comes down to two parts: what is in the best interest of the individual and what is in the best interest of society as a whole? When we consider this standard (which is the standard often used by judges in courts of law - by the way) I think it makes the question a little bit easier to answer. Is it in the best interests of an individual to consume alcohol at the age of 18? Is it in the best interests of society (as a whole) to have 18 years old consuming alcohol? The statistics Jenn provided answer these questions to some degree. I imagine that Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) would also have some interesting statistics to provide as well.

I think that one question that I would love to know the answer to is why 18 year olds feel that they need to drink at that age? What is the purpose behind wanting to be able to do that? Are they simply wanting to have one glass of wine with their dinner? What is their true motive for making this an issue? I also want to point out that universities that are for this change in the law are simply LAZY. They want the law changed so that they do not have to deal with the legal consequences of their students’ behaviors. That same laziness - I will point out - has resulted in other areas being “ignored” (e.g., date rape incidences, etc.) and is a horrible reason to propose changing a law.

[I also want to add something here for the sake of our readers who are of a denominational faith that does not propose drinking alcohol at any age. Many of us writing for Consider Lily were raised in just such a faith (for example, Nicole's entry). I do believe that the Bible gives 3 clear directives toward alcohol (no drunkness, no drinking if it causes another to stumble, and obey the law of the land). Our topic on this blog is dealing with the "obey the law" part of these directives. Regardless of the "age debate," there are writers who I know do not partake in alcohol by their own choice. I wanted to make this clear as I realize this topic can be somewhat "emotionally charged" and that is not the purpose of this dicussion.]

Nik, I think the “law of the land” distinction is important…thanks for pointing that out. As for your question about why 18 year olds feel that they need to drink… why does ANYONE feel that “need?” I’m not sure that age is a particular influencer of desire. Jenn, thanks for doing the hard part and providing some statistics regarding this issue. I am going to refrain from offering my opinion about statistics and instead agree that, obviously, it’s valuable to note that ALCOHOLIC ACTIVITY REPRESENTS RISK. Hopefully, as much as we may disagree on this age issue, we are all unified with regard to the fact that, should alcohol be abused, consequences can be great. I am excited to hear from our readers (ie: actual 18 year olds!) about their thoughts.

Great discussion ladies. This is obviously a hard one…
I, too, did a little research. So here’s some facts from the other side. Jenn’s stats are absolutely right about the number of alcohol related driving fatalities decreasing in the years after the drinking age was raised from 18 to 21. However, that law changed in 1975…and in the subsequent years seat belt laws have come to be, airbags were invented, and cars in general have become progressively more safe. So perhaps those statistics don’t indicate a direct correlation. In order to save space (and avoid plagarism:)), if you’d like to read some arguments from the “lower the drinking age” side, check out www.chooseresponsibility.org
The site touches on more statistics, and compares America’s binge drinking culture amongst late teens to other countries with lower (or no) legal drinking age.

My argument FOR lowering the age is simliar to Nicoles, in that I believe we should do it, but that it should come with mandatory alcohol management classes and stiffer penalties for DUI’s. RIght now, for a mere 1000 dollars you can have a DUI erased from your record completely with the help of a good lawyer. That’ll teach em!

My cousin got married this summer at the tender age of 19. He has graduated college (smarty pants), taken on a responsible full time job, voted for who he believes should lead this country, and purchased a home. Doesn’t it seem silly that he can’t sit at his kitchen table and have a glass of wine…or that on his Hawaiian honeymoon he was not allowed to enjoy a pina colada with his wife?

Eighteen is the mark of adulthood in this country in so many other areas. Why not this one? I think it’s time to look at how our country educates our teens on alcohol consumption (and the lack of real consequence we have for abusing it)…this is where I believe the issue lies…not in some arbitrary age limit.

I wholeheartedly agree with KJ - the issue is in the education, not in the legal age limit! You’re all making excellent points about alcohol adding tons of risk to a situation, and I don’t think anyone disagrees on that point. I just want to address a couple of concerns, though: I agree that we shouldn’t change laws just because people break them - I think I might have given the opposite impression. I do, however, think that the law should be changed because it contributes to unsafe decisions and it aggravates binge drinking culture. There’s a difference between changing the legal age the slippery slope argument about something like legalizing marijuana: drinking, within a certain context, is legal. The fact that we’ve made it legal at all means that our society has decided that it’s not all bad. Marijuana can’t say that.

I’m all for making 18-year-olds take a long, scary class about how to use alcohol properly and what can happen if you don’t. I’m also all for making the penalties for a DUI really, really strict (to be fair, some states are much stricter than others. The law student in me would encourage you to write your congressman if your state lets people off for any amount of money).

Pro-21 ladies, I think that your statistics are great, and that you have excellent points. My concern, though, is that the same logic doesn’t just lead to the conclusion that the drinking age should stay where it is, but it also follows that alcohol should be prohibited completely! Yes, alcohol is a risk factor, but it is just as risky for 21-year-olds as it is for 18-year-olds. No matter how old someone is when they start drinking, I strongly believe that the only thing that keeps them from doing stupid things is education (either from D.A.R.E. programs as kids or from getting great - or poor - grownup examples). I agree that people mature a lot between 18 and 21, but I really don’t see what makes the difference between someone we trust to drink responsibly and someone we trust to get married, sign contracts, serve in the military, or buy a GUN (now THAT’s risky!).

I guess I’m not seeing or understanding how lowering the drinking age = more responsible drinking. A class!? A mandatory class, it seems to me, would do about as much good as the DARE program has. There actually are some good programs in high schools right now about drinking. But I don’t think education is the answer. Our culture thought educating teens about sex and helping them have “safe sex” was going to help the teen pregnancy rate and STD epidemic, but it absolutely hasn’t. I don’t think a class or any educational program is going to drive the foolishness of alcohol abuse from the hearts of the masses. It’s true, there is a double standard in where adulthood begins. But as Christians, this is the take home point. Sometimes, we have to make sacrifices for the greater good. We should constantly practice giving up and not demanding our personal freedoms for the good of our weaker brothers. For the 2 or 3 out of 10 eighteen-year-olds who are responsible enough to drink in moderation, we ought to be willing to give that up eagerly for the so many who will lose their lives and kill innocent people when making poor choices concerning alcohol. Waiting a few years won’t kill us. But the truth is, people will die on the other hand. And again, I think Nikki is correct in the motivation behind the push for this law change. Universities are tired of dealing with the consequences and trying to enforce the problem of underage drinking. We have to look at not only what we think OUGHT to happen if this law changed, but what would realistically happen.

Jenn, I agree with your point that we sometimes need to give up personal freedoms for the good of the masses. Of all the arguments for keeping the drinking age where it is, I think that is the best one. I’m not sure though, that the current drinking age is keeping the more irresponsible or reckless 18 year olds from drinking…my experience in college was that they disregarded the law, while the more responsible kids, for the most part, followed it.
As the worst offender of what I’m about to criticize, I do want to challenge both Jenn and Nikki on the “motive judging”. It is possible that these 100+ University professors are tired of dealing with this, but it’s also possible that they believe young adults who are living on their own, making ALL of their own life decisions, holding down jobs, balancing studies, work, recreation, and leisure, should be allowed the freedom to have a beer. It could also be that they have done their research on European cultures where there is a lower (or no) drinking age and see that binge drinking and reckless behavior associated with alcohol consumption is MUCH less of a problem in those places. And just MAYBE, they want the best for their students and believe if college freshman didn’t have to drink in “secret” they wouldn’t be so inclined to go overboard.
I don’t know their motive, but I think we should be careful when stating it for them.

**FYI: actually from 1991 - 2005, following the implementation of abstinence programs, the teen pregnancy rate experienced an uninterrupted FOURTEEN YEAR decrease.

You’re right Kelly. I really don’t know their motives. It is purely my opinion. In my opinion, I don’t think these universities are working to change a law just to free these hard-working students up to drink beer legally. If there’s an injustice worth the trouble of fighting for in the legislature, I don’t think it’s this one, without it working to make their lives easier. But again, that is my cynical point of view, I admit. I don’t think it’s going to change our culture concerning alcohol for the better. Totally my opinion. And since we are not legislators, I think maybe a topic worth discussing in addition to this would be how to encourage your peers to obey the law, whether you agree with it or not, and what goes into a decision to drink or not as a Christian, considering all of the things Nikki mentioned above. Young adults can read this and decide what they think about the current law, but in the end, it is fruitless when it comes to application. I’m hoping this has spurred us to think about what we can do now concerning the drinking culture at our own universities. How can we be apart of the solution now, and what does that look like for Christians?

INCREDIBLE! Have we FINALLY started showing our readers what a healthy discussion about current topics can look like? I think so! Kudos and hand claps to all of you! Love it!

One point on the “motive” discussion going on here. My reference to the college administration motives was actually from several (non-faith based) books I was required to read in a seminary class last semester about the current “Millenial” generation on campuses. Almost every university/college cited that dealing with the drinking issue on campus had become a major concern and liability hassle. So - I think the motive part could include what KJ and others pointed out (I’m typing quickly so I apologize if I have left off who actually made the statement), but it does appear to also include the “hassle factor.” Which, let me be honest here, bothers me as a lawyer on all sorts of levels. But that is a discussion for another time…

Jenn raises a good question in her last comment - I would love to hear responses to that. I also have a question that I was thinking about. Have we addressed whether just removing the age limit altogether would be the proper approach? I’m thinking of countries like France that have no age limit and purportedly (the last I checked) claim they have a better “control” with alcohol abuse. I guess if we’re discussing lowering it to 18, why not just get rid of it all together? Did someone already talk about this and I missed it? I’d be curious to hear what some of you “pro-18″ position-takers would think about that idea.

One other thought as I am not certain if I will be able to get back on here before this discussion uplinks: Kevin and I have talked about this issue before. We worked with high school students for many years and the one thing we have noted is that as we get older we forget how much there is a complete lack of discretion and maturity among MANY 18 year olds. We can all name “smart” 18 year olds, but the law we set in this country applies to EVERYONE. The maturity factor is exactly why Kevin and I would probably lean against lowering the age limit. One other concern I have is that 18 years old (if legalized) could buy beer for their younger friends (which would undoubtedly happen) and through which the rise of sexual assault would also undoubtedly happen (if you track the legal court system statistics for sexual assault related to alcohol). These concerns are why I don’t see the wisdom in lowering the age limit.

Wow… I don’t think we’re “considering lily” now so much as “considering every loaded topic of all time”.

I fully understand the point about maybe colleges not wanting to deal with the hassle of policing their students…whether or not that reasoning seems like a cop-out, I think that it’s completely reasonable for colleges to do exactly that. By the time that young adults are leaving for college they MUST already have a value system in place…it isn’t a university’s responsibility to implement it. For that reason alone I would argue even more fervently for the lowering of the legal drinking age.
As for the topic of following the laws of the land…I think that would be a really GREAT post…LATER (this one is already sucking up all the oxygen in the room).

Yes, I mean a sequel, part II, the next season of the Bubbling Debate. If anyone has made it all the way down to this point, I’d be impressed. In fact, I think we could almost write anything this far down in a post, and it might not matter, because I think I would have too much ADD or my children would have set the house on fire by now if I were reading this long. So from now, I plan to write all of my most inflamatory opinions really far down in long posts like this…that way no one sees them except Sally, who has to edit them. Sorry Sally.

Not a problem Readers, sorry if I missed a typo or twenty - you can see why! Great discussion, ladies!

-Sally