I'm Not as Thunk as You Drink I am

Back in college, I got tired of enduring the autumnal round of "My God, college students are Drinking!" stories in the local and national news. So I wrote a piece in the student paper taking adults to task for their hypocrisy, for romanticising their party days in films like "Animal House," but having spitting hissy fits when their kids do likewise.


I'll be honest: as far as I, and just about everyone I knew, was concerned, the drinking age being 21 was a minor inconvenience, easily surmounted. I had liquor just about whenever I wanted it, without bothering about a fake ID. I broke the law, deliberately, repeatedley, and without remorse. I justified this by the old dictum that an absurd law has no binding effect.


This guy (link via The Agitator)suggests that the 21 law is not only absurd, but bad law. Apparently binge-drinking is the result of the 21 Law, because kids wouldn't do this if they could drink in bars. He then claims to be a "charter member of Presidents Against Drunk Driving," which has no web site that shows up on Google, yet has no better solution to the drunk-driving problem than baldly declaring that if we were really worried about that, we'd raise the driving age to 21.


A stupid argument, but here's something worth looking at: according to MADD's own figures, the age group most likely to die in a crash that's due to alchohol is not teenagers or twenty-somethings but those between 31-40. Add to that the fact that the number of highway deaths total has been static since the early 80's and we have to ask: is there a way we can have driver safety and still let 18-year-olds, who can vote, drive, marry, and die for their country, have a beer?