A growing number of college administrators and health professionals aren't convinced that the age-21 laws help curb problem drinking.
"Not all the evidence is on one side of the question," says John M. McCardell Jr., former president of Middlebury College in Vermont and founder of Choose Responsibility, a nonprofit group that advocates for changes in minimum-drinking-age laws and that circulated the college president's petition. "We're not ignoring science. There is science on both sides of the question."
For example, the reduction in traffic fatalities may be credited to other safety measures, such as the use of restraints, better automobile design, improved hospital trauma care and stricter traffic laws, in addition to the lower drinking age, some studies suggest.
Those on the age-18 side have studies as well.
* A 2003 study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that, though fewer high school-age students drink now compared with the late 1970s, the rates of binge drinking among all adults 18 and older have risen. Published in the Journal of the American Medical Assn., the study encompasses 1993 to 2001 and showed rates of binge drinking have increased the most (56%) among underage drinkers.
This out-of-control drinking may be fueled, McCardell says, by the age-21 laws, which drive underage youth to drink in clandestine settings and apart from older adults who might model more appropriate behavior.
"College presidents are limited on campus to a message of abstinence-only," he says. "They can't say drink moderately or drink responsibly. They can only say abstain."
* Though alcohol-related traffic deaths have declined overall since 1982, deaths have begun to inch up again in recent years, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
* A 2003 study showed that in many countries with lower minimum drinking ages, 15- and 16-year-olds are less likely to become intoxicated compared with teens in the U.S.
McCardell agrees that studies show the younger someone starts drinking, the greater the likelihood of developing alcohol dependence. But, he says, the 2006 Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine study shows that the correlation is greatest at younger ages.
"Between 13 and 18, the effect is dramatic. But between 18 and 21 it's visible but insignificant," McCardell says. "What we ought to look at is not keeping 18-year-olds from drinking, it's keeping 13-year-olds from drinking."
