Opinion: Revisit the drinking age

Jenna and Barbara Bush, the president's 19-year-old twin daughters, are having to answer to state authorities in Texas for a "youthful indiscretion" of the sort for which their father was famous. Barbara, who attends Yale University, received a misdemeanor citation for possessing alcohol, and her sister Jenna, who was with her at a Mexican restaurant and bar in Austin, was cited for trying to obtain a drink with a fake I.D.

These young women, both of whom are good students, are living under a microscope -- precisely what they feared when their father announced his presidential bid. They are not the first -- nor will they be the last -- college students who try to order an alcoholic drink illegally. In fact, according to a study done by the Harvard School of Public Health, 80 percent of today's college students use alcohol, many of them responsibly. That, of course, is nothing to celebrate. Alcohol abuse by people of all ages is a growing national problem.

The problem for the Bush twins is that their typical college-student breaches of law make headlines. But their scrape with the law offers an opportunity to revisit an issue that has been moribund for more than 15 years: Should 19-year-old adults who are considered to be of legal age for every other purpose -- responsible enough to enter into legally enforceable contracts, vote for their representatives and serve in military combat -- be prevented from buying a beer?

In Florida, as in most states, the drinking age was raised to 21 after the federal government in 1984 made the distribution of federal highway funds contingent on the higher drinking age. Prior to the federal coercion, every state had established its own drinking age. In Florida, that age was 19.

Congress forced the states' hands in the mid-1980s in response to an outcry by Mothers Against Drunk Driving. The group claimed that raising the drinking age would reduce the number of drunken drivers on the road, and there is no doubt stricter enforcement of drinking laws has helped. Yet, if the rationale for banning drinking for those ages 18 to 21 is to reduce drunken driving, then there is no reason to stop at 21. Even when 18- to 20-year-olds were allowed to drink alcohol, they made up a far lower percentage of drunken drivers than people ages 20 to 29. So why not make the drinking age 30?

Rena Pederson, the editorial page editor of the Dallas Morning News, recently wrote: "The truth is our country bombards young people with commercials that drinking beer is the national sport and then criminalizes them if they join in. That's where the hypocrisy comes in. Young people are well aware they can vote at 18 and serve in the military at 18, but can't buy alcoholic beverages."

Pederson quoted Dr. Ruth Morgan, former provost at Southern Methodist University and a presidential scholar, as saying the law's focus should be on personal responsibility rather than artificial age limits. "The age may be a false issue," Morgan said, "because it is arbitrary. It might be more effective to focus less on the age, but have a penalty for the behavior."

That is a debate worth having.

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