Heavy drinking among college students
The idea that these individuals were heavy drinkers before they got to college and just continued their prior drinking patterns is open to challenge. Instead, for some individuals, it is apparently the excessive drinking behavior of their peers that affects them.
According to the survey authors, “We have shown that this differential change after high school is largely attributable to college students’ greater likelihood of leaving the parental home and smaller likelihood of getting married in the four years after graduating from high school.” The authors also noted that membership in a fraternity or sorority also increases the risk for binge drinking as well as for the use of marijuana.
Some individuals believe that a dialogue should be opened about lowering the drinking age because of the problem college students have with heavy drinking. The Amethyst Initiative, an organization of college presidents based in Washington, D.C., says that “a culture of dangerous, clandestine ‘binge drinking’-often conducted offcampus-has developed. Alcohol education that mandates abstinence as the only legal option has not resulted in significant constructive behavioral change among our students. Adults under 21 are deemed capable of voting, signing contracts, serving on juries, and enlisting in the military, but are told they are not mature enough to have a beer.
By choosing to use fake IDs, students make ethical compromises that erode respect for the law.” There are about 100 college presidents who are members of this organization, including presidents of Dartmouth, Duke, Ohio State, and many others.
The idea of lowering the drinking age infuriates members of MADD, who regard it as irresponsible to even consider lowering the drinking age. They are concerned that drinking will become an even worse problem if the drinking age were lowered.
One possible benefit to lowering the drinking age is that the “forbidden fruit” aura surrounding drinking would be eliminated on college campuses, because most people in college are age 18 and older. There would also no longer be a two-tiered system of those who are 21 and older and thus legally allowed to drink and those who are younger than 21 and who could be criminally prosecuted for their drinking behavior. However, at the same time, it can be argued that if the drinking age were lowered to age 18, then people who were 16 and 17 would be obtaining fake IDs and drinking to even greater excess than as of this writing. It is likely this debate, as with debates about decriminalizing marijuana use, will continue for the foreseeable future.
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Mark S. Gold, M.D. and Christine Adamec
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REFERENCES
- Amethyst Initiative. Statement. Available online. Accessed March 1, 2009.
- Beirness, Douglas J., and Erin E. Beasley. Alcohol and Drug Use Among Drivers: British Columbia Roadside Survey, 2008. Ottawa, Ontario: Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse, 2009.
- Berridge, Virginia, and Sarah Mars. “History of Addictions.” Journal of Epidemiology and Public Health 58 (2003): 747–750.
- Blanco, Carlos, M.D., et al. “Mental Health of College Students and Their Non-College-Attending Peers: Results from the National Epidemiologic Study on Alcohol and Related Conditions.” Archives of General Psychiatry 65, no. 12 (2008): 1,429–1,437.
- Blocker, Jack S., Jr. “Did Prohibition Really Work: Alcohol Prohibition as a Public Health Innovation.” American Journal of Public Health 96, no. 2 (2006): 233–243.