Your silly laws won't stop us kids from boozing

Dr. Henry Wechsler, director of the highly regarded College Alcohol Study, is a self-styled expert on binge drinking. But when trying to assess just how connected to reality Wechsler is, it is worth noting that he writes e-mails in all capital letters. I ask him why it is that underage drinking is considered inherently irresponsible, and he responds, "I think it is likely that younger people are more likely to take risks, to be unaware of consequences, or to be less experienced about their limits."

Not much of an answer, is it? Sadly, current thinking about adolescent alcohol consumption—and there has been a lot of it lately—has been similarly lacking in understanding. In the last month alone, the Harvard Crimson conducted a landmark survey about campus drinking; D.A.R.E. acknowledged its own ineffectiveness; and the Connecticut Coalition to Stop Underage Drinking held a conference on campus-community collaboration. (Interesting Big Brother sidenote: Wechsler, D.A.R.E., and the Coalition are all funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.) But in all of this, common sense has apparently been passed by. Nobody has dared to suggest the truth—that underage drinking is inevitable and not necessarily bad, that maybe the best thing to do is just to teach people who drink to do it responsibly.

This is what the Connecticut Coalition's program manager, Gary Najarian, claims to be doing. He says he is simply trying to provide people with information about the consequences of their actions. "Young people are not the targets here. We don't want them to lose any freedoms." While this sounds far more friendly than Wechsler's rhetoric, which tends to center around punishment, it turns out that Najarian also advocates trying to eliminate the supply of alcohol to minors.

So I ask Najarian and his sidekick, Campus Programs Coordinator Dawn Cassiello, if restricting the alcohol supply might lead to more bingeing, only on fewer occasions. Amazingly, Cassiello agrees, but she counters that at least aggregate drinking will decline. But if the Coalition is actually committed to stopping the negative consequences of excessive drinking, this is clearly the wrong approach.

The Connecticut Coalition, as well as the new incarnation of D.A.R.E., also give a lot of credence to the normative approach—that eliminating the perception of drinking as pervasive will somehow reduce binging. And Wechsler says that his survey results indicate that the majority of students want drinking to decrease. However, many of the students who advocate tighter restrictions are the ones who are actually doing the drinking. Thirty-seven percent of binge drinkers actually called for a reduction in underage drinking, for example. There seem to be only two possibilities: these people feel like they need help controlling themselves, or they think the rules do not or should not apply to them. But Wechsler acknowledges neither possibility, barely addressing the question. "Those binge drinkers who support a crackdown probably don't consider themselves to pose a problem."

Perhaps the only place where Wechsler makes sense is in his economic analysis of drinking: it is, he says, a relatively inexpensive way for college students to have fun. Which—gasp!—is precisely why it should not and cannot be taken away. These Puritan teetotalers are attacking a pastime that is in itself innocent just because directly addressing the causes and symptoms of irresponsible drinking is too difficult. The fact is that alcohol doesn't make people do stupid things—people do. Statistics from Mothers Against Drunk Driving (M.A.D.D.) even show that teenagers devise strategies to prevent drunk driving more often than adults.

What is needed is a Coalition Against Stupid Drinking, adults included. Although there clearly is a certain age before which drinking should not be permitted (Najarian tells me stories about sixth-graders who drink on a regular basis), it's hard to actually pick a number. Life isn't a game of blackjack—there's nothing magical about 21. The chaos and injustice that result from such a limit have long been too self-evident even to require enumeration here.

The real answer is to provide sufficient, balanced education that really lets people make decisions for themselves. There should be consequences for the violence and property damage that result from irresponsible drinking, not for the drinking itself, and certainly not for those who sell alcohol. And if some sort of demarcation is needed, how about "vice licenses," revocable documents that, like driver's licenses, indicate that their bearers are mature enough to handle a drink.

As I drool longingly at stories of the booty cam, which I will never be old enough to see while a student here, I ask but one favor. When you drink, behave yourself. I've seen you trying to destroy the sculpture in the Pierson courtyard. I've heard you getting belligerent. Although we may all reach majority age before the laws change, there's no sense in bringing on the repression of our successors through our own irresponsibility. The last thing Wechsler needs is more ammunition. Kushal Dave,PC '02, is a senior editor of the Herald.

Back to Opinion...