Part II: The Law
 |
| above: hot and sober |
Well, it's finally arrived. In exactly 24 hours, I will turn 21 years old. I will finally be able to have
my first beer.
Okay, you caught me. It won't be my first beer. I've had a few in my day, in clear and blatant disregard for the law.
The national drinking age, set at 21 years old for over two decades now, is a law that I'd like to call into question. This is the purpose of today's post, to inspect why the drinking age came about, how it is enforced, and why it doesn't fucking work. Yes, it's time to get serious here on PoYB.
Now, before we start this potentially lengthy diatribe, I want to first say that I'm not going to burden my argument with facts and figures, and I'm not going to quote any sources. This is not a bullshit essay for an Alcohol Awareness class. If that weakens my argument, so be it. I don't have the energy to care THAT much. Take my anecdotal arguments or leave them.
Furthermore, I'm pretty biased in that I am an avid drinker, a drinker who really hasn't encountered any harsh realities of the very real dangers of drinking. I've gotten in trouble, occasionally been slapped on the wrist for my actions, but I have never lost a loved one to a drunk driver or taken any trips to the hospital or been negatively affected by an alcoholic, thank the good lord. So all you straightedge kids of the world, I implore you to just skip this blog post. I don't feel like getting in a fight over this shit. I'm going to be of legal age tomorrow and none of this will matter to me personally anymore.
SO ANYWAY, let's begin with how the drinking age was established, as I see it. In the late '70s, the United States faced a problem in rising counts of deaths on the road caused by driving while intoxicated. Lead by the Mothers Against Drunk Driving, or MADD, supporters of the 21-year-old age limit lobbied Congress to pass the National Minimum Drinking Age Act in 1984. It didn't set the drinking age at 21, but it threatened states with cutting their highway funding if they didn't. So, in effect, all 50 states were blackmailed into submission anyway.
MADD generally sees this law as a success. It's true, the number of highway deaths caused by alcohol
has dropped significantly since prior to their lobbying.
The true success of MADD was their effect on the general outlook on the idea of "drunk driving." Drunk driving is considered by most to be, like,
really bad. Even the worst of the teenage drunks will say that he isn't stupid enough to get behind the wheel. When someone does, he is generally berated by his friends for his social crime. They shake their heads and say, "dude, that's really fucked up." When I watch
Dazed and Confused, it fucking blows my mind that their culture didn't really care if people drank and drove, because my culture here in 2009 frowns upon it so heavily.
This was the success, in my mind, and it is due to this success that the drinking age now no longer makes sense.
Drinking and driving is still a problem, I'll admit, but we're no longer acting like Randall "Pink" Floyd and Wooderson, "catch ya later at the water tower, we'll get hammered and drive home" bullshit. Goddamn, teenagers are responsible behind the wheel!
The drinking age now really has nothing to do with drunk driving. People who are going to drive will drive, people who won't simply won't, and it doesn't matter if you are 21 or eighteen or 82. To prevent drunk driving, make stricter drunk
driving laws, NOT general drinking laws.
You know what the drinking age has done? It's made alcohol abuse among teenagers
worse.
I'm not saying that lowering the age to eighteen would eliminate people getting obliterated beyond control. People would still do that. But it would cut out a lot of the shit that teens do behind locked doors.
Consider the sorority sister who wants to drink a little bit for the big football game on a Friday night. It is against the law for her to drink at the game, so that is out of the question. So she takes the pregame into her dorm room, where she and a few friends pound six or seven shots right before they leave.
What if she had been allowed to legally drink at the game? She would be drinking in a supervised environment then. She wouldn't be drinking six shots because it's in plain view of school authorities who, while not being able to punish the person drinking directly, would definitely frown upon the excessive drinking, and in the mean time keep a watchful eye over the situation. So she has a few beers at the game. She is safer.
Consider the freshman who is at his first frat party. After about an hour, and three beers, the cops surround the house, issue 200 underage drinking tickets, and steal all the kegs. What is the intended outcome? Is the freshman supposed to think, "Gee, those cops were right, I'll never drink again"? What are the actual consequences? The cops breed a contempt for authority, the freshman just finds a different way to drink, and nothing changes, except that maybe the frat throws its parties at a different house.
There are other ways that the law is enforced that are fucking senseless. Consider the guy who is twenty, knows how to drink responsibly, and has a few with his buddy in the next neighborhood over. It's time to go home, so he calls another friend, the designated driver, who is stone-cold sober and who comes to give the tipsy kid a ride home. He has done the responsible thing. Except, the designated driver gets pulled over because his taillight is busted. The cop smells booze in the car, breathalyzes the passenger, and gives him an underage citation. The kids was responsible in controlling his liquor intake, and calling a designated driver, and is still punished! This happens!!
Now consider briefly the people some people who are in charge of enforcing this law (I say briefly because I could easily write books instead of this one paragraph). I focus my attention not on our cops and judges, but on those individuals we know as "RAs." These authority figures are kids themselves—who break drinking laws themselves!—and who are writing students up at alarmingly speeds on college campuses, sometimes for the wrong reasons. I know someone (cough) who was busted in his room one day while he played water pong.
Water pong. The beer was in the fridge, but the RA went along and opened the fridge, lied and told his boss that he had saw beer in cups on the pong table (it was fucking water!). All this because the poor kid had broken up with his girlfriend who happened to be friends with said RA, and said RA sought revenge for the individual by abusing his powers.
All because a few cans of beer were in the fridge, and the drinking age prohibited it.
Fucking abuse of power by a kid that breaks the same goddamn rules he used to abuse his power.
Okay, let's calm down. Let's get back to being logical, and not emotional. Fuck that RA. Fuck him. It's over, and there are other issues regarding this bullshit law that need to be discussed. Onward...
UPenn does something that's really great. It's called the "amnesty law." If someone, be it a friend or otherwise, has had a bit too much to drink, you can go up to a school official or RA or whoever and claim the amnesty law, which prevents you from getting in trouble for being drunk for the sake of the safety of another student. This makes sense because sometimes when a kid is in trouble of getting really fucking sick, or even dying, from alcohol intake, no one wants to get help because they are afraid of the law.
Guess what happens when I find a person turning blue in the face and report it to someone here at university? Not only do I get a pat on the back for doing the right thing, but I also get slapped with an underage drinking charge for drinking with the other student.
Did I mention my school is ridiculous about how it handles underage drinking? I feel it to be an honor and a privilege that I have been used and abused as an example of what happens to underage drinkers here at school. Ah! But I'm getting to emotional again. Back to the point!
My point in all this is that teens need to be responsible in their drinking. If someone is stupid enough to do eighteen shots on their eighteenth birthday, then they are fucking asking for a free trip to the G-Town Hospital.
But at the same time, teens need to be provided with a little trust. The trust that teens hold behind the wheel, in the voting booth, and on the battlefields needs to be given to them at the bar. Teenagers, when not trusted to handle drinking responsible, WILL NOT handle drinking responsibly.
All those cops and MADD members and goddamn RAs are not doing anything to prevent underage drinking. They are just pushing it more and more underground, to depths that it becomes more and more dangerous. Did we learn nothing from the Prohibition?
The only way to develop good drinking habits is to bring it out in the open. This age limit is fucking nonsense. Why not drop the age limit, and do everything we can to educate youngsters and try to develop great drinking habits within view of responsible elders? One can learn how to drink responsibly with their parents at a family dinner, not in the woods with a handle of Vlad.
When states lowered the drinking age to eighteen way back in the '60s and '70s, there was a huge spike in the number of deaths caused by drinking. But the problem was, the only thing they did was lower the age. No other preventative measures were instilled. It was like the states just said, "hey kids, it's fine now, go get fucked up." And people went crazy and died.
Lower the age, I say. Not only lower it, but try to instill responsible habits at the age when boys and girls become men and women. We can handle it, I know we can.
This drinking age just doesn't work. It just fucking
doesn't. I shouldn't have to be this excited for a goddamn birthday.
As a way to end this post on a positive note: I realize that the law has affected my life greatly. It has caused me great pain, and great pleasure. I wouldn't be where I am today without the law being what it was, so in that regard, I've made my peace. Nevertheless, I feel bad for those who still need to wait a few years to have their day of legality. Because the law fucking sucks.
