WASHINGTON (AFP) — US parents, politicians and educators have responded with outrage to a radical proposal by over 100 university heads that the country reduce the legal age for drinking alcohol to combat "binge-drinking."
While the university presidents -- including heads of prestigious institutions like Duke, Dartmouth and John Hopkins -- say lowering the drinking age to below the current 21 would actually help combat alcohol abuse, opponents say the move would increase deaths and brain damage to young people.
In a statement this week Laura Dean-Mooney, president of the influential Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD), branded the so-called Amethyst Initiative lower drinking age proposal "a misguided initiative that uses deliberately misleading information to confuse the public."
"As the mother of a daughter who is close to entering college, it is deeply disappointing to me that many of our educational leaders would support an initiative without doing their homework on the underlying research and science," Dean-Mooney said. "Parents should think twice before sending their teens to these colleges or any others that have waved the white flag on underage and binge drinking policies."
"Countless lives have been saved since Congress raised the national minimum drinking age to 21 in 1984. We need to maintain this important law," said Senator David Vitter.
But the 119 university presidents and chancellors who signed the Amethyst Initiative -- the name derived from ancient Greek for "not intoxicated" -- maintain that banning drinking for those under 21 has only led to more and more secretive "binge-drinking," in which students consume copious and often dangerous amounts of alcohol in one session.
Twenty-four years after the US Congress mandated a threshold of 21 years of age for alcohol sales, they said, "our experience as college and university presidents convinces us that 21 is not working."
"A culture of dangerous, clandestine binge-drinking, often conducted off campus, has developed," they said in a joint statement.
"We call upon our elected officials to support an informed and dispassionate public debate over the effects of the 21 year-old drinking age."
John McCardell, the former president of Vermont's Middlebury College who launched the initiative, said the educators want to foster responsible drinking among young people who are getting alcohol and abusing it despite the laws.
"We are against intoxication. We are for responsible adult behavior when it comes to alcohol," he told National Public Radio.
"The data overwhelmingly show that the vast majority of young people by the time they reach college age have already have some exposure to alcohol."
MADD, which fights alcohol among young people and backs strong punishments for drunk-driving, acknowledged that US universities have particular problems with student drinking, with 30 percent of university and college students abusing drink, and six percent becoming dependent.
"There is a perfect storm of affluence, opportunity and tolerance on college campuses," they said.
But, Dean-Mooney said, the universities themselves are to blame for not enforcing the laws.
"By signing onto this initiative, these presidents have made the 21 law nearly unenforceable on their campuses. In fact, I call into question whether or not these campuses are bothering to enforce the 21 drinking age," she said.
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