Drinking Age

WESTERN Maryland College's "Spring Fling" a week ago Saturday turned into a May melee.Flying beer bottles, police in riot gear and pepper spray were the order of the evening, as another usually quiet campus got its name in the papers in an unintended way.Western Maryland is not alone. Similar disturbances have occurred this spring at Michigan State, the University of Connecticut, Ohio University, Washington State, Plymouth State, the University of Tennessee at Martin and Miami University of Ohio.

BROADWAY, Va. -- There's a limit to the ability of mere laws to fix our problems.Take the case of the state of Virginia, which is considering lowering the drinking age. Not because 18- to-20-year-olds have been so impressive in how responsibly they've been using alcohol, but for precisely the opposite reason. In recent months in the state, five alcohol-related deaths have been recorded among underage college students.Faulty premiseSo, why lower the legal age? The thinking is, so long as college students' consumption is illegal, their schools are barred from leading these young people toward wiser drinking habits.

A new tavern opened this month in Salisbury, with sports decor, ear-splitting deejay music and inexpensive wine, beer and eats.But this wasn't an ordinary tavern debut. Teen-agers mixed with patrons of drinking age, who wore identifying wristbands. There was no smoking, no hard liquor, and the Crossroads pub -- named by a vote of students at Salisbury State University -- sits smack in the middle of campus.While colleges in New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Florida have gone "dry" this fall after two student deaths attributed to binge drinking, Salisbury State, the Johns Hopkins University and Mount St. Mary's College in Emmitsburg are taking the opposite tack.

An editorial in the Nov. 14 editions of The Sun stated incorrectly that St. Mary's College operates a tavern on its campus. In fact, it is Mount St. Mary's College in Emmitsburg that runs an on-campus tavern.The Sun regrets the errors.IF YOU'RE 21 or older you can buy a beer at a pub on the campus of Salisbury State University, Johns Hopkins University or St. Mary's College.Those Maryland academic institutions have decided one way to control student drinking is to become their bartender. Some colleges in other states have been doing that for years.

'Big Brother' wants your medical filesHats off to Jennifer Katze, chair of the Maryland Psychiatric Society Privacy Committee and the Maryland Health Care Access and Cost Commission Consent Committee. Her clear, factual and well-written opinion Perspective article (July 14, "Who's seeing your files?") should be a wake-up call telling too-trusting Marylanders that ''Big Brother'' is collecting their medical records without their knowledge or consent.Not only have insurance companies, Medicare and Medicaid been submitting patient data to the state since HCACC began operating in 1994, but we now discover that Maryland's hospitals have been submitting even more comprehensive patient discharge information to another state entity (the Health Service Cost Review Commission)

Good news also found in Belair-EdisonYour front-page attention to the innovative efforts in neighborhood preservation by the Belair-Edison community is commendable ("Belair-Edison's efforts fail to stop flight to the suburbs," April 3).Residents and leaders have taken a sweeping approach to avert decline and disinvestment of the community and have many success stories.Unfortunately, the good news is shrouded by the headline, which undermines the news value of the article and draws a premature and negative conclusion.

Four people were shot and a man was arrested after a underage drinking party turned violent at a home in rural Frederick County early yesterday, authorities said.Shooting broke out at the home in Ijamsville, five miles southeast of Frederick, about 12:15 a.m. after an argument erupted between partygoers and a group of young Damascus men attempting to crash the festivities, said county Sheriff Carl R. Harbaugh.A partygoer and one of the Damascus men recognized each other from a fight they had last summer in Ocean City.

Washington. -- At a liquor store in downtown Washington, a teen-ager buys a six-pack of beer as easily as he might buy a six-pack of Pepsi. In a Virginia suburb, 20 or so high-school students pile into five cars after a party at which some had been drinking.These two unrelated incidents represent the ingredients of a lethal combination -- alcohol, cars, teen-agers.Motor-vehicle injury is the greatest threat to the lives of adolescents in America. During the 1980s, over 74,000 teen-agers were killed in such accidents -- more than died from all diseases combined.

Four people were shot and a Damascus man was arrested after an underage drinking party turned violent at a home in rural Frederick County early yesterday, authorities said.Shooting broke out at the home in Ijamsville, five miles southeast of Frederick, about 12:15 a.m. after an argument erupted between partygoers and a group of young Damascus men attempting to crash the festivities, said county Sheriff Carl R. Harbaugh.A partygoer and one of the Damascus men recognized each other from a fight they had last summer in Ocean City.

Every week, some 8 million American teen-agers -- five, six, seven years under the legal drinking age -- hunker down and chug-a-lug. At least half a million of them are binge drinkers, consuming five or more drinks at one session. Given the all too obvious ramifications of such behavior, Surgeon General Antonia Novello is right to put the national spotlight on the drinking problem. But Dr. Novello's call for the industry to voluntarily withdraw commercials aimed at teens is no solution.Novello's request comes, ironically, on the heels of an inspector general's report criticizing the industry's current efforts to regulate advertising.

Five bars are clustered on Route 1 just south of the University of Maryland, College Park campus. Three liquor stores are just north of the university. No wonder, students say, that drinking is a problem. "Pretty much the only thing you have to do in College Park is go to the bar," said Alex Beuchler, a UM student and president of the Resident Hall Association. "You're going to sneak a drink in the residence hall and binge drink quickly because you don't want to get caught, or go to one of the bars."

Offer young adults a license to drink? Wednesday's Baltimore Sun covered a new report calling for raising the driving age to 17 or 18 ("Group calls for higher driving age," Sept. 10). The article fairly covers the pros and cons of that idea and presents interesting statistics on injuries and deaths involving young drivers. Recently, The Baltimore Sun and other media outlets reported on the proposal by a coterie of university presidents to debate lowering the legal drinking age to 18 ("Colleges: Drinking age 'not working,'" Aug. 19)

Lowering drinking age bad for public health The Baltimore Sun has it right, and I had it wrong. The Baltimore Sun editorialized on Wednesday that "the legal drinking age of 21 should remain" ("Binge drinking challenge," Aug. 20). As a legislator in the 1970s and 1980s, I supported the drinking age of 18. In the 1970s, the argument persuading legislators to lower the drinking age to 18 was the slaughter in Vietnam. Children were being drafted to fight for their country. How could you tell them they are old enough to die but not old enough to drink?

Somewhere in Maryland, there's a state employee who owns a piece of the gold Michael Phelps will bring home from Beijing. This fellow was never part of MP's training team, and neither mentor nor boyhood friend. In fact, he's someone Phelps probably doesn't like to think about - the state trooper on duty when the great athlete did something foolish and dangerous. The trooper stopped Phelps from driving out of Salisbury under the influence of alcohol, saving not only the Olympian's life but possibly someone else's.

Is 18 too young to drink alcohol? As a 20-year-old college student who does not drink alcohol and has no desire to do so, I want to express my gratitude to William E. Kirwan, the chancellor of the University System of Maryland, and to the university presidents speaking out against, and encouraging others to reconsider, the insanity of the current drinking age of 21 ("Colleges: Drinking age 'not working,'" Aug. 19). I am offended and appalled that at the age of 18, I am considered competent enough to vote for my elected officials, sign legally binding contracts and serve in the military, yet if I were to be found drinking a beer, I could be treated as a criminal.

A number of respected academic leaders in Maryland believe the legal drinking age should be lowered from 21 to 18, to help confront what they describe as a hidden crisis in binge drinking among students. But they offer no convincing evidence that lowering the drinking age would reduce excessive alcohol use by college students. What we do know is that since 1984, when Congress effectively raised the national drinking age to 21, the number of young drivers charged with drunken driving has declined significantly, as has the number of alcohol-related highway deaths.

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.

Top university officials in Maryland - including the chancellor of the state university system and the president of the Johns Hopkins University - say the current drinking age of 21 "is not working" and has led to dangerous binges in which students have harmed themselves and others. Six college and university presidents in Maryland are among more than 100 nationwide who have signed a statement calling for a public debate on rethinking the drinking age. It is a rare joint effort by the leaders of religious, liberal arts and large research universities to curb what they see as the top student-life issue on their campuses.

Historically, young males have had a significant edge over girls in a wide range of risky behaviors, among them, binge drinking and failure to wear seat belts. As a result, young men have been far more likely than young women to die in car crashes. Now, according to emergency department physicians from University of California Irvine Medical Center, boys still drink, fail to use seat belts and die in car crashes more often than girls, but girls began to narrow the gap in all measures between 1995 and 2004.

The first national study of liquor advertising and its effects on youth confirms what many have long suspected -- that young people who see more ads for alcoholic beverages tend to drink more. Researchers at the University of Connecticut and Ohio State University conducted the study. "This is the most solid piece of research evidence to come forth to date linking exposure to alcohol advertising and increased youth drinking," said David Jernigan, director of the Center on Alcohol Marketing and Youth at Georgetown University.