Public debate verdict: let 18-year-olds drink
By: Andy Bruner
Issue date: 11/21/08 Section: News
The hot topic of whether or not to lower the legal drinking age turned out to be rather one-sided at a DePauw Debate Society event Tuesday.
The small audience that gathered in Peeler Auditorium for Tuesday's debate was in unanimous agreement with the debate team of senior Mike Lutz and freshman Sam Holley-Kline, who argued that the U.S. should lower the drinking age to 18.
Holley-Kline said during the debate that it is inconsistent that Americans can vote, get married and go to war at 18, but they can't drink alcohol.
"You're being given the weightiest responsibilities and you're not given the simplest, the meanest privilege of drinking," he said.
Lutz and Holley-Kline's debate opponents, junior Keelin Kelly and sophomore Jess Hawkins, argued that the drinking age is higher than the age for other privileges because teenage drinking can have negative effects on the brain.
"Twenty-one is a period when the body is fully matured," Hawkins said. "If you ingest alcohol before 21, damage can be done to your reasoning and memory."
Kelly and Hawkins' main argument was that alcohol abuse is a "societal issue" that wouldn't be solved by introducing Americans to alcohol at an earlier age. Instead, lowering the legal age would simply move the problem seen on college campuses into the nation's high schools.
"This is something that society perpetuates, not the drinking age being 21," Hawkins said.
If the legal age is lowered, she said, "it will not solve any of the problems; it will mask them."
Kelly said statistics show the number of high school students who drink has decreased since federal legislation effectively raised the drinking age from 18 to 21 in 1984. That, she and Hawkins said, is a clear benefit of the higher drinking age.
Lutz and Holley-Kline countered that alcohol is freely available to underage citizens already, and that forcing them to hide their drinking from the public encourages a "forbidden fruit" mentality. That leads to irresponsible behaviors like drinking too fast and drinking in unsafe settings, they said.
Lutz said this reality creates special problems for college campuses in particular.
"Having a drinking age that doesn't match the time people actually start drinking puts college administrators in a tough position because they have to be duplicitous," he said. "If we admit drinking is just part of life, there's nothing wrong with it … then the underage student will be much better off."
Like all of the roughly one dozen students at the debate, sophomore Kevin Milne bought Lutz and Holley-Kline's arguments. He said he believed letting young adults have access to alcohol earlier would encourage moderation.
"I just thought there'd be less chance of underage drinking and drunk driving if it were lowered," Milne said.
The small audience that gathered in Peeler Auditorium for Tuesday's debate was in unanimous agreement with the debate team of senior Mike Lutz and freshman Sam Holley-Kline, who argued that the U.S. should lower the drinking age to 18.
Holley-Kline said during the debate that it is inconsistent that Americans can vote, get married and go to war at 18, but they can't drink alcohol.
"You're being given the weightiest responsibilities and you're not given the simplest, the meanest privilege of drinking," he said.
Lutz and Holley-Kline's debate opponents, junior Keelin Kelly and sophomore Jess Hawkins, argued that the drinking age is higher than the age for other privileges because teenage drinking can have negative effects on the brain.
"Twenty-one is a period when the body is fully matured," Hawkins said. "If you ingest alcohol before 21, damage can be done to your reasoning and memory."
Kelly and Hawkins' main argument was that alcohol abuse is a "societal issue" that wouldn't be solved by introducing Americans to alcohol at an earlier age. Instead, lowering the legal age would simply move the problem seen on college campuses into the nation's high schools.
"This is something that society perpetuates, not the drinking age being 21," Hawkins said.
If the legal age is lowered, she said, "it will not solve any of the problems; it will mask them."
Kelly said statistics show the number of high school students who drink has decreased since federal legislation effectively raised the drinking age from 18 to 21 in 1984. That, she and Hawkins said, is a clear benefit of the higher drinking age.
Lutz and Holley-Kline countered that alcohol is freely available to underage citizens already, and that forcing them to hide their drinking from the public encourages a "forbidden fruit" mentality. That leads to irresponsible behaviors like drinking too fast and drinking in unsafe settings, they said.
Lutz said this reality creates special problems for college campuses in particular.
"Having a drinking age that doesn't match the time people actually start drinking puts college administrators in a tough position because they have to be duplicitous," he said. "If we admit drinking is just part of life, there's nothing wrong with it … then the underage student will be much better off."
Like all of the roughly one dozen students at the debate, sophomore Kevin Milne bought Lutz and Holley-Kline's arguments. He said he believed letting young adults have access to alcohol earlier would encourage moderation.
"I just thought there'd be less chance of underage drinking and drunk driving if it were lowered," Milne said.
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