Dump the drinking age

The 21 drinking age was a stupid idea and it is past time for it to go.

Dozens of U.S. college and university presidents have signed a letter urging a public debate over lowering the nation's drinking age to 18. Let's make that debate swift, though. Millions of Americans already have spoken on the worth of the drinking age law.

By breaking it.

The 21 drinking age has done nothing - zero, zilch, nada - to stop people from drinking until they turn 21. All the drinking age does is turn under-21 drinkers into lawbreakers. That forces their drinking out of the public eye, away from parents, teachers and other responsible adults who could us their influence and example to enforce responsible drinking by young people.

And for some young people, "responsible drinking" may mean no drinking at all. I've seen the damage that alcoholism can do in a family and am trying to teach my kids that alcohol and their genes don't well mix.

Frankly, that job would be a lot easier if their friends who will start drinking were doing so in the open, where their parents and friends' parents could see it, rather than hidden away behind lies and cover-ups. The university presidents are talking about a drinking age of 18. Here's a crazy idea: How about 16? Or even 14?

Why? My kids are 11 and 8 now, and we enjoy frequent parties and dinners with them and their friends and their friends' parents. These get-togethers have helped all of us build a large, nurturing and healthy community at their school, one where parents feel comfortable helping the kids, and the kids feel comfortable with many of the parents.

I fear, though, that as some of the kids start drinking, they will segregate themselves from this community, to drink in private, and that they will start putting pressure upon their friends, including my children, to do the same. I don't buy the cynical idea that no teens ever want to socialize with their parents. Yes, they do need and will want time alone, as they do now, as pre-teens. But illegal drinking makes the parent/teen divide worse that it needs to be.

Laws should help protect communities, not segregate and destroy them. And when the vast majority of people affected by a law do not abide by it, as generations of Americans have kissed off the drinking age, we need to talk about why we have that law in the first place. (FWIW, I also find it ironic how so many Republicans and conservatives, who stereotypically support home-based solutions to social problems rather than government-based ones, flip on this issue and instead support the government setting rules on personal drinking.)

There are other, better, ways to address alcohol abuse in this country. Let's talk about them.

Robert Niles also can be found at http://www.themeparkinsider.com