The minimum legal drinking age, or MLDA, is often a hot topic, especially among college students. This summer, national attention was focused on it again, as a group called the Amethyst Initiative announced that is had the sigatures of 130 college presidents asking lawmakers to re-open the conversation about the drinking age.
Naturally, the staff of CROSSROADS is often asked to comment on the drinking age debate. Here are three main comments that we would make:
1. CROSSROADS supports any critical examination of the role of alcohol in our culture and on our college campuses, especially what factors influence the binge drinking culture on college campuses.
2. A key component of the CROSSROADS mission is providing accurate, non-judgmental information about substance use and encouraging safe and responsible use. The educational messages that we provide to students would change very little if the drinking age was lowered.
3. CROSSROADS is dedicated to evidence-based practive and research in substance abuse prevention. As prevention scientists, we find the evidence of the effectiveness of the Minimum Legal Drinking Age to be overwhelming. Any alternate proposal to the Minimum Legal Drinking Age would need to be at least as effective as the current policy.
Here are some key resources if you are interested in learning more about the Minimum Legal Drinking Age debate:
Higher Education Center MLDA Q & A, information from the U.S. Department of Education about evidence of the effectiveness of the drinking age.
Choose Responsibility, a non-profit organization in favor of lowering the drinking age.
Information about European versus U.S. Youth Drinking from OJJDP
There are hundreds of opinion pieces about the MLDA debate available online, including the Seahawk student newspaper. We encourage everyone who is interested to become familiar with facts about this issue.
