Liquor And Liberty

“When I read about the evils of drinking, I gave up reading.”
Henry Youngman


Watch CBS Videos Online

The minimum drinking age has never been about public safety, it has always been an issue of morality and control. (If they really cared about kids well being, they’d raise the smoking age.) It is part of the legacy of the woman’s suffrage movement which pushed for prohibition and like all prohibition the negative consequences far outweigh any positive corollary. You ban abortion you get dead girls with hangers up their gashes, you illegalize the legitimate brokering of life saving organs you get kidney thieves, you ban youth drinking you get dead kids.

Liquor legislation has a lot in common with gun legislation. Back in the day when high schools had shooting clubs and kids took their guns to school on school busses or public transit their were far fewer teenage gun related injuries and deaths. There is a direct correlation between the criminalization of firearms and the increase in gun related accidents, fatal or otherwise. likewise, there is also correlations between liquor control and alcohol related accidents.

People often bring up the fact that if one is old enough to go to war one should be old enough to drink. This is a very good point but there are other points that are just as valid and not as often brought up. Many states allow you to get a hunting license as young as 12, some states allow you to marry as young as 12 also. You can drive, a much more dangerous endeavor than drinking, as young as 15. You can legally purchase cigarettes at 18 which is much worse for the individual and society than drinking, hell you can be in porn as young as 17, why not drink?

The thing about drinking is that it is liberating, mind altering, encourages devious thoughts and deviant deeds, boys become courageous, girls become uninhibited, this is very scary for parents but incredibly frightening to societies controllers. Them boys were sloshed to the gills when they dressed up like Indians and threw that tea into that harbor. The liquor fueled teenage riots around concerts and sporting events are the closest things we have to popular uprisings these days. Liquor is an essential element to these little mini revolutions, bottled bravery it is called. This is the true reason for the over legislation of drinking.

The good news is that there is a growing movement of respectable folks, academics, school faculties and health care providers who are challenging prohibition. Chief among these is the Amethyst Initiative which is made up mainly of college administrators and instructors. There is some hope that there will at least be a new public debate on this issue but there are so many people and organizations with an entrenched interest in keeping the kids from having a drink that it will likely be a hard right to reclaim.