Health, safety and transportation advocates denounced yesterday a proposal by more than 100 university administrators to reconsider the legal drinking age of 21 - contending that any reduction would lead to thousands of additional drunken-driving deaths and other harm to the public health.
A letter released by the college administrators did not specifically endorse a lowering of the drinking age, though many who signed it said they thought it should be reduced to age 18.
Opponents nationwide as well as in Maryland unleashed a barrage of e-mails and news releases scoffing at the notion that the current drinking age is "not working" and needs to be re-examined.
"Both research and the hands-on experience of state highway safety agencies indicate that this law has saved countless lives. Underage drinking remains a serious problem that needs to be addressed, but lowering the drinking age would be a gigantic step backward for highway safety," said Christopher J. Murphy, chairman of the Governors Highway Safety Association.
Dr. Henry Wechsler, a lecturer at the Harvard School of Public Health, called proposals to lower the drinking age akin to "pouring gasoline to put the fire out.
"We know from previous experience that when the drinking age was lower in the 1970s, that deaths among 18- to 20-year-olds in traffic fatalities went up by about 800 a year," said Wechsler, the lead investigator in national studies done by the school of public health from 1993 to 2001 that examined binge drinking on college campuses in 40 states. "We also know that when the age was raised in the 1980s, the opposite occurred - deaths went down."
Call for debate
The criticism follows the release of a statement Monday by more than 100 college and university presidents - six of them from Maryland - calling for a new public debate on the age at which Americans are permitted to buy and consume alcohol. The educators contend that the higher drinking age has driven alcohol consumption underground and contributed to a campus culture that encourages dangerous "binge drinking."
The educators also say they cannot test new ideas and focus on better alcohol abuse education because of the law.
It didn't take long for the debate to take a vigorous turn as Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD), leading legislators and the acting chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board denounced the idea of lowering the drinking age.
