Show Tempest in a bottle lowering the legal drinking aae age I 1 Shari Roan Los Angeles Times Gordie Bailey Jr hac had been in college only one month before he overdosed on alcohol Urged on b by members of a fraternity he was intent on joining the year old drank until he passed out was dumped onto a couch and was found dead the next morning The 2004 incident at the University of Colorado was one of the approximately 1700 related alcohol-related deaths that occur among college students each year in the United States They include traffic accidents falls suffocation drowning and alcohol poison poisoning ng Hundreds of thousands of other students commit crimes become crime v victims fail classes make poor sexual decisions or sicken themselves by drinking too much alcohol In a survey published last year by the American C College Health Association just over third one-third of college students admitted t they ey had binged on alcohol at least once in the previous two vo weeks a number that appears to be rising Underage drinking has long alarmed college administrators and health professionals But now a adeep adeep adeep deep schism is forming among those same people on how to address the problem Last month more than college presidents signed a petition calling for a debate on whether the minimum legal drinking age should be lowered from 21 to 18 The statement says in part Our experience as college and university presidents convinces us that twenty-one twenty is not working A culture of dangerous clandestine drinking drinking bine n fc o often conducted off- off campus has developed Some health professionals agree its it's time to discuss the proposal but other health experts and college officials are aghast Each side has statistics to but support its position most of the health and safety evidence falls squarely on the side of an age 21 limit There is a growing body of knowledge that suggests strong reasons for parents and other concerned people to try to keep alcohol out of the hands of young people as long as we can says Susan Foster vice president and director of policy research at the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University Statistics on traffic fatalities prove the law works says Michele Simon research and policy director at the Marin Mann Institute an alcohol industry watchdog group in San Rafael Calif In 1984 a federal standard was established setting the minimum legal drinking age at 21 Since then traffic fatalities among drivers ages 18 to 20 have fallen by an estimated 13 percent according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration That is a really important measure of success says Simon Back in the when states started lowering the drinking age to 18 that's when this experiment began There were increases in traffic fatalities and people said lets let's go back to the way it was We forget there is so much science and historical context here We have been down this road before Among those studies comparing the years before 1984 with the current era was a 2001 report from the National Institute on Drug Abuse which found that college students who reported drinking in the last month fell from 82 percent in 1980 to 67 percent in 2000 In 2007 the University of Michigan's annual Monitoring the Future survey found that annual alcohol use by high school seniors has dropped from 77 percent in 1991 to 66 percent last year Perhaps the strongest evidence for the harmful health effects of drinking at a young age come from studies on biology and addiction Foster says A 2002 report from the American Medical Association citing numerous studies concluded that alcohol use during adolescence and young adulthood causes damage to memory and learning capabilities A study in the 2006 Archives of Pediatrics Adolescent Medicine found that teens who began drinking before age 14 had hada a lifetime risk of alcohol dependence of 47 percent compared with 9 percent for those who began drinking at 21 For each additional year under age 21 of drinking the greater the odds he or she would develop alcohol dependence Though the cause of this correlation is unknown some experts believe pure biology priming the young brain to need alcohol is involved This is a public health problem and a medical problem Foster says Its about the national failure to recognize addiction as asa asa asa a disease If we think of it as kids behaving badly or breaking the rules that getsin gets getsin in the way And in a 2002 analysis of 33 quality high-quality studies on the age 21 drinking laws law's effects University of Minnesota researcher Traci L. L Toomey found that all but butone butone butone one study showed the higher age resulted in lower rates of alcohol consumption and traffic crashes It is the most well- well studied alcohol control policy we have in this country says Toomey an associate professor in the school of public health Usually we find no effect when we do policy studies Here we have this policy effect that is very consistent a big chunk of the studies showing this inverse relationship A growing number of college administrators and health professionals arent aren't convinced that the age 21 laws help curb problem drinking Not all the evidence is ison ison ison on one side of the question says John M. M McCardell Jr former president of Middlebury College in Vermont and founder of Choose Responsibility a nonprofit group that advocates for changes in minimum-drinking-age minimum laws and that circulated the college presidents president's petition Were Vere not ignoring science There is science on both sides of the question F in traffic fatalities may be credited to other safety measures such as the use of restraints better automobile design improved hospital trauma care and stricter traffic laws in addition to the lower drinking age some studies suggest Those on the age 18 side have studies as well A 2003 study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that though fewer high school- school age students drink now compared with the late the rates of binge drinking among all adults 18 and older have ri risen en Published in the Journal of the American Medical Association the study encompasses 1993 to 2001 and showed rates of binge drinking have increased the most 56 percent among underage ge drinkers This out-of-control out drinking may be fueled McCardell says by the age 21 laws which drive underage youth to drink drinkin in clandestine settings and apart from older adults who might model l more u 0 w appropriate behavior College presidents are limited on campus to a message of abstinence- abstinence only he says They cant can't say drink moderately or drink responsibly They can only say abstain Though related alcohol-related traffic deaths have declined overall since 1982 deaths have begun to inch up again in recent years according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration A 2003 study showed that in many countries with lower minimum drinking ages 15 and year olds are less likely to become intoxicated compared with teens in the US U.S. McCardell agrees that studies show the younger someone starts drinking the greater the likelihood of f developing alcohol dependence But he says the 2006 Archives of Pediatrics Adolescent Medicine study shows that the correlation is greatest at younger ages Between 13 and 18 the effect is dramatic But between 18 and 21 its it's visible but insignificant io T r i a. a 1 h f I t. t t d r tV I t oJ 1 I r rt tr i t j t 11 1 1 I J f r 1 I t t r L k J i 4 r f t 0 l r J I 1 M 1 Iq 7 r 4 j r iL f. f R t f i l n l I 1 I rt t f r F fo I i. i A I I Ij j ir I I t F t Photo for the Los Angeles Times i McCardell says What we ought to look at is not keeping year olds from drinking its it's keeping 13 year-olds year from drinking A major question not answered by research is whether mild or occasional drinking such as a beer or glass of wine causes any physical harm pi tates harmful behavior in 18 year-olds year says Brenda Chabon associate professor of clinical psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Montefiore Medical Center in New York Its the way people drink not the fact of drinking Chabon says What Wh f vo would ld harm a developing brain brainis is repeated hangovers and blackouts and head trauma from falling But if someone were drinking moderately from age 18 I haven't seen any data to show that would have harmful effects in the thelong thelong thelong long run There is little evidence in humans to suggest that mild to moderate te drinking in late adolescence causes any damage says David J. J Hanson professor emeritus of sociology at the State University of New York at Potsdam who has studied the literature The research is almost exclusively based on rats and humans who are alcohol addicted he says It doesn't look at moderate drinking at all Weve We've got a alot alot alot lot of cultural cross evidence that it isn't harmful at all The argument over the minimum legal drinking i I age has heated up in recent years due to publicity given to out-of-control out drinking among college-age college youth and tragic deaths such as Gordie Bailey We need to ask what I is driving this behavior Foster notes Were really tolerating a culture of substance abuse on our college campuses There is no evidence that lowering the drinking age would i address these problems The alcohol industry i which advertises heavily i ito to college students should come under the microscope as well as the role tole of parents in setting attitudes and expectations for their r f children she says i |