OPINION: Laws of an infantocracy

Millions of college students drink, get drunk and fall down. It's a well-known problem. There oughtta be a law.

Oh, that's right, there is a law. Since 1985, a federal mandate has forbidden the sale to or consumption of alcohol by anyone under age 21. States that don't comply lose federal highway funds. The law has been an abysmal failure, succeeding only in illustrating the law of unintended consequences. The unintended consequences of the drinking age are so serious that presidents of 120-plus colleges and universities have signed the Amethyst Initiative. One of them is Richard Celeste, president of the prestigious Colorado College.

The initiative asks our nation's leaders to rethink the drinking age because it's causing more harm than good.

The university presidents have learned that government regulation and criminalization of common adult behavior simply creates an underground market of dangerous activity. They discovered what the entire country learned during the Prohibition era: Making something illegal doesn't stop its use. The college presidents argue the 21-yearold drinking law has created "a culture of dangerous, clandestine, ‘binge-drinking' - often conducted off-campus."

Before the mandatory 21-year-old drinking age, students in many states were able to join one another at the local pubs. It wasn't unusual for professors of small evening classes to invite students to nearby restaurants or bars for continued discussion of the lecture. Some students drank, others did not. It was an educational and social occasion, not an occasion to induce vomit and pugilism. College students were treated as adults, and they acted more like adults.

"When we were drinking we were drinking with each other. We weren't drinking against each other," said Robb Watt, a local movie producer who was shocked by the violent binge parties he discovered recently while filming the documentary "Haze," about the deadly party lives of today's college students.

Watt and his colleagues discovered an underground college party culture that involved rampant, uncivilized violence and debauchery throughout the country. They were hired to produce the film by parents of the late Gordi Bailey, the CU-Boulder freshman who drank himself to death during a 2004 underground frat party.

Effects of the higher drinking age were noticeable immediately after the federal mandate in 1985. Jerry Steinman, publisher of Alcohol Issues Insights, reported in a letter to The New York Times that alcohol-related deaths of 18-year-olds rose substantially between 1985 and 1986, after a sharp decrease between 1982 and 1985.

"There was, therefore, a sharp reversal of the trend, possibly because of the enactment of the minimum-age-21 laws and despite the continuing campaign against drunk driving," Steinman wrote.

Ruth Engs, professor of applied health sciences at Indiana University, wrote in 1998 that surveys of students revealed the national minimum drinking age had led to immediate and substantial increases in the number of students vomiting from drinking, cutting class after drinking, missing class due to hangovers, fighting, and getting lower grades because of drinking.

It doesn't take an expert, or a scientific study, to see what has resulted from the federal drinking age mandate. Nearly all who have attended college - drinkers and nondrinkers alike - know about the parties in basements, frat houses, and cars that are thrown to facilitate unlawful drinking away from authorities.

The underground booze parties enable and encourage binge drinking, and drugging, for a variety of reasons. Students can drug because they've gone out of their way to distance themselves from bar owners, bouncers, cops and other forms of authority. They can drink ridiculous amounts of alcohol because they aren't paying the prices people pay in the above-ground world. Above-board drinkers typically pay $4 and up for any kind of alcoholic drink at a restaurant or bar. For little or no cost, underground drinkers binge from hidden kegs of beer or stashes of whiskey.

Even in this American infantocracy, humans are emancipated adults at the age of 18. They can wed, have children, and lead warriors in battles overseas. They will never obey a Congress that says don't enjoy a beer. Instead, they'll continue imbibing underground - out of sight and out of mind and away from a variety of social controls that keep adults in check.

Congress should listen to our learned college presidents and eliminate this dangerous, unworkable law and allow 18-year-olds to drink. Meanwhile, young adults should consider the advantages of choosing not to drink.