Spring Break
Whitworth: Colleagues wrong to lobby for lower drinking age
Elizabeth Ross
Issue date: 9/22/08 Section: Inside WCC
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"They just want to make it easier so they don't have to deal with the illegality of drinking on their campus," Whitworth told The Voice. "They're in a difficult situation knowing that it happens and they're supposed to enforce the law and they don't want to do that," Whitworth said.
An organization called "Choose Responsibility" is leading the lobbying effort to lower the drinking age. It has more than 100 college and university presidents signatures on Amethyst Initiative, saying they believe the age of 21 is not working and that something should be done about it.
Whitworth acknowledges that university presidents face different issues than he does because they have students living in campus dormitories. And while some college students are of the legal age (21) to consume alcohol, many are not.
"It is a problem. Access is a problem," Whitworth said. "But I don't believe that by lowering the age you stop the binge drinking. I think you simply promote it."
The age associated with buying alcohol hasn't always been 21. In 1984, Congress passed the National Minimum Purchase Age Act, raising the age to 21. States aren't forced to comply, but if they do not they stand to lose 10 percent of their federal funding for roads.
Prior to 1984, the legal purchase age was 18 in many states, a move that was made when the voting age was also lowered to 18.
Anne Garcia, WCC behavioral sciences instructor, recalls "a big push" among people who were of an age to be drafted to go to war, but weren't able to vote in that day. So once the voting age got lowered, other things changed.
"If they were allowed to vote, and if they were allowed to go to war, then we were treating them like adults," said Garcia of the thinking at the time.
The common argument is that if 18-year-olds can go to war, they should be allowed to purchase alcohol.
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