There's a trouble around; it's never far away
The same trouble's been around for life and a day
"Whiskey Bottle," Uncle Tupelo

Not everyone can make the claim that a legendary band wrote a song about their college town--while they were attending college. The whiskey bottle of Uncle Tupelo's song actually refers to the steeple of the Baptist church in downtown Columbia, Mo. Interestingly enough, most students saw Donald Duck in that steeple. But that's another story. This piece is about whiskey bottles and college towns.

The Amethyst Initiative is a group of college presidents that are interested in exploring new ways in reducing drinking by college students. One of their ideas is lowering the drinking age. Last week, they put out a statement saying just that.

All holy hell broke loose. Mothers Against Drunk Driving spewed forth a knee-jerk press release accusing the college presidents attempting to harm the young people attending their institutions. The press release didn't cite any of these studies, but the MADD web site has a lot of documentation. As you might imagine, MADD is almost entirely concerned with drunk driving. And when the drinking age rose to a universal 21 across the nation back in the early 1980s, drunk driving accidents among teenagers fell. Of course, most of the college students engaging in binge drinking aren't driving afterwards. They're passing out in apartments, dorm rooms or campus quads. I'm not trying to dismiss MADD's stats, but they're not entirely germane to the discussion.

I also don't buy claims in the blogosphere that MADD is a prohibitionist organization. While a lot of folks in MADD are no doubt tee-totalers, the group itself isn't supremely tight. Back in 2004 and 2005 when I was working with Pop the Cap to raise the alcohol limit on beer in North Carolina, folks opposing our efforts tried to get MADD to denounce us. But MADD had done a study based on a similar law change in Ohio and determined that the availability of stronger beer doesn't raise drunk driving rates. So MADD declined to take a position on the Pop the Cap law. That non-denouncement made it a lot easier for us to get our bill passed.

I'm a beervangelist. I believe that sharing beer (or wine or whatever) with friends is extremely conducive to socializing. I generally don't pound the beer, but a nice buzz does contribute to a general good feeling.

Most often, young drinkers don't set out to get hammered. They want the buzz, just like me. Unfortunately, kids are impatient. So they drink too much too fast, shortening the buzz or even bypassing it altogether. Then they keep drinking in hopes of somehow recovering the buzz that has long passed them by, and eventually they themselves pass out.

In other words, they don't how to drink.

If there's anything social scientists agree upon, it's that parents are the people who have the greatest influence on their kids. Parents aren't particularly influential when they whip out lectures, groundings and the like. Rather, kids--even teenagers--watch their parents and learn from how their parents act. That what all those "Parents: The Anti-Drug" ads should be all about.

The biggest problem with the current drinking age is that it takes parents out of the alcohol education equation. By the time kids are legally old enough to drink, most of them are out of the house. Until kids are 21, parents are hounded into toeing the "just say no" line. There's no room for kids to learn how to drink from the folks who matter the most. I believe that this lack of parental influence is one of the major causes of the young drinking problem.

I'm one of those morons who thinks the drinking age should be 16 and the driving age 18 (or older). That would allow kids to learn how to drink in public while still under the eyes of their parents. And it would allow kids to learn how to drink before they drive a car.

But would lowering the drinking age without increasing parental involvement reduce teenage drinking? Would increasing the driving age reduce teenage drinking and driving? I don't know. I think it might, just because there would be less furtive drinking and thus more social controls, as opposed to the current legal strictures that don't seem to be doing much to solve the problem. But I can't say for sure.

That "whiskey bottle over Jesus" still stands in Columbia. The boys in Uncle Tupelo were trying to reconcile their hatred for greedhead frat boys--the very folks who were instrumental in putting the band on the map. The struggle between art and commerce is endless. The struggle of children to learn the ways of adulthood is likewise eternal. The best way for kids to learn how to handle drinking is to learn from their parents. Lowering the drinking age just might make that a little easier.

Kids in America don't know how to drink. Too many of them drink too much too often. The current drinking age doesn't seem to help with the problem. When the status quo is an obvious failure, there's no reason to keep things the way they are. You'd think we'd have learned that over the past eight years.

Apparently not.

While a college student, Jon Worley discovered that the best way to buy alcohol without a fake ID is to buy the good stuff on a weekday with the rest of his groceries.