A New Argument Against the 21 Drinking Age and Mothers Against Drunk Driving
By Robert Schlesinger, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
One rarely hears something new in as debated a topic as whether to move the drinking age from 21 back to 18, so I raised an eyebrow when Choose Responsibility's John McCardell praised Mothers Against Drunk Driving in his Colbert Report appearance the other night.
(Truth be told, as readers here know, I was at Middlebury College when McCardell was president, so seeing him trading witticisms with Colbert caused both of my eyebrows to go north.)
The biggest opponent in McCardell's crusade against the drinking age is Mothers Against Drunk Driving, which was a force behind the original move to 21. So I thought McCardell handled them deftly on Colbert.
McCardell: Mothers Against Drunk Driving deserves enormous credit ... less for raising the drinking age—that's not the way you take drunks off the highways, there are more effective ways to do that. What Mothers Against Drunk Driving has done is make it uncool to drink and drive. The designated driver wasn't part of our vocabulary 25 years ago.
Colbert: That's a good point—Mothers Against Drunk Driving are the ones who popularized the idea of the designated driver.
McCardell: They did, and they deserve enormous credit for that. But it's not 1984 any more. And yet the law that was passed 25 years ago is still on the books. And the issues surrounding alcohol and young people these days are very different. By far the greater loss of life, for example, in alcohol-related incidents for those under 21, occurs off the highways.
It's a textbook brush-off of an unassailable opponent: Simultaneously praise them and say that their day has passed. (Think about Barack Obama versus John McCain or Bill Clinton versus Bob Dole: I honor my opponent's service to our country, which is another way of saying: He was a hero once, but golly he's old.)
McCardell and Laura Dean-Mooney, national president of MADD, debated the drinking age issue in the magazine last year. Read their pieces and then, of course, check out Colbert:
| The Colbert Report | Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c | |||
| John McCardell | ||||
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Reader Comments
Blah.
I hate everyone.
you
i love everyone
vote for new age of 19.
i believe that it should be turned to 19 as the legal drinknig age in the U.S. If you can go to war and kill someone why not have the right to drink? All over the world the U.S. is polled as having the highest drinking age. Most all of the other surronding countries have a drinking age of 18, ans some even less. In other countries who have a legal drinking age if 18 rated to have higher SAT scores than that of the U.S. who currently have the 21 age instated. I do not believe that it should be lowered to 18 because in this respect most teenagers are still in high school. This would not be a wise descision because then the high schoolers who are 18 would probably be the major suppliers to the younger kids throughout the school who are not yet 18. I do believe though that 19 would be a resonable age, 1 because most teenagers by this time are out of high school and are considered adults. They can vote at 18, have all legal privialeges of being an adult and one of the biggest ones they fight for our country. If we are having adults who are 18 fighting and voting for our country i believe that these same people should have their say as to whether or not they will drink. Let congress decide, but i have taken various surveys from high schools around my area, and also local citizens and over 80% said that they think it should be lowered to 18.
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