Several students interviewed yesterday at Johns Hopkins said lowering the drinking age could reduce binge drinking. "I think alcohol is seen, a lot of times, as a forbidden thing, and people want it," said Jamie Hittman, 20, a junior from Columbia. "It's almost like contraband. Once you get it, you have to drink all of it."
Katie Buckheit, 19 and also a junior, said if people were exposed to drinking at a younger age, they would be more mature about it. "Maybe I'm being idealistic, but in Europe you can drink once you can see the bar," she said. "I think we should maybe take a lesson from what other countries are doing."
But Laura Kranish, an 18-year-old sophomore from Silver Spring, said students would drink as much as they do no matter what the drinking age is.
Robert Caret, the president of Towson University, says he personally believes 18 is a more reasonable drinking age than 21, but he is not working toward that end. Rather, he said, he welcomes the discussion.
"Let's debate the age and look at the pros and cons," he said. Caret, like the other presidents, knows he is treading on delicate ground. But the officials say they have seen too much tragedy and too many lives ruined to abide the current policies.
"I really think we've got to somehow be able to control it better because what we have done now is driven it underground, and we can't do anything about it," said Tipson, the Washington College president. "There are a lot of things we could do if it wasn't underground."
stephen.kiehl@baltsun.com
Sun reporter Sumathi Reddy contributed to this article.
