Efforts by Middlebury College ex-president John McCardell to open the debate about lowering the minimum drinking age (see February INSIGHTS) have been getting some media traction. In recent weeks, Newsweek, Copley News Service, The Boston Globe and several radio stations have run stories/interviews that have aired McCardell's views that minimum age 21 drives drinking underground, encourages lawbreaking, denies the reality of young adult drinking, etc. The Boston Globe's lengthy June 2 article weighed the proposal from different perspectives, including well-known researchers Henry Wechsler and Ralph Hingson, who criticized the proposal, and Michael Haines, who embraced it. Predictably, MADD's chief executive Chuck Hurley also rejected the notion, and said McCardell is not a "good listener. He's like a dog with a bone." But Dartmouth's president agrees with McCardell: "Our students are adults, and they need to be treated as adults. Obviously there are a lot of abuses of alcohol. It's the abuses that need to be treated," James Wright told the Globe. Acknowledging that he's been called "a wacko or somebody who's tilting at windmills," McCardell keeps saying: "All I want is discussion."
Copley News Service put the debate in the context of San Diego's large military population and the disconnect that 18 year-old Marines can "face death in battle" and "make life-and-death decisions in split seconds," but can't legally choose between a Miller or a Bud. That has changed slightly. In a quiet policy shift adopted in mid-April, the Marine Corps joined the Army, Air Force and Navy in allowing Marines overseas to drink in countries where the minimum age is lower than 21, as it is almost everywhere else in the world.
But the Marine Corps took an additional step, allowing local installation commanders to "decriminalize welcome-home beer for underage Marines returning from deployment and giving commanders the authority to hold an 18-and-up kegger on base upon a unit's return from a war zone," reported the Marine Corps Times. Alcohol may also be provided to 18-20 yr-olds at other "infrequent non-routine military occasions" such as on-base dances/parties, again under the commanders' discretion and providing that they "ensure that appropriate controls are in place to prevent endangering military service members or the surrounding community," the new policy states. This change "makes the Marine Corps the only service that allows personnel under age 21 to drink in the US," Marine Corps Times noted.
Prof. McCardell´s Minimum Age Proposal Getting Attention; Marine Corps Loosens Regs
Publishing Info
- Newsletter: Alcohol Issues Insights
- Published: 06/14/2007
- Volume: 24
- Issue #: 6