A committee within the Vermont State Senate recently submitted for passage legislation that would create a task force to consider lowering the state's legal drinking age to 18 ("Vermont to reconsider drinking age," Mar. 25).
While hundreds of bills pertaining to lowering the legal drinking age are filed in state legislatures every year, few are ever assigned to a committee, and even fewer make it out of the committee with a recommendation for passage. Even if the bill currently being considered in the Vermont legislature only represents the first step in a long and arduous lawmaking process, the very idea of lowering the state's drinking age is both inauspicious and ill-advised.
As residents of a town situated directly on the Vermont"New Hampshire border, members of the Dartmouth community understand the potential ramifications of this move as well as anybody. When Congress passed 1984's National Minimum Drinking Age Act, which stipulated the withholding of federal highway funds from any state that did not set the legal drinking age at 21, it was concerned with the consequences of having variable drinking ages across states. As Hanover belongs to one of the few unified interstate school districts (Dresden) in the region, and many Dartmouth students live on the far bank of the Connecticut River (especially in the summer), passage of the law would result in a frightening new dynamic for the area.
In Norwich, off-campus housing would spring up en masse, playing host to regular parties the likes of which might even rival those of fraternities on campus. Inebriated guests would then be forced to return to their homes on campus, and inevitably people would drive drunk. To further complicate matters, Hanover High School students would not only cross the Ledyard Bridge to buy alcohol, but would often locate their parties in Vermont. Students returning to Hanover following the parties would face the same temptations as their college-aged peers.
Putting aside the disastrous consequences the new law would have for Hanover, unilaterally lowering the drinking age in any single state is a decidedly bad idea. At present, American society is not adequately equipped to deal with the repercussions of making alcohol readily available to high school students. While many proponents of lowering the drinking age point to Europe as an example of success, they fail to consider the deep cultural differences that make teenage access to alcohol incredibly more problematic in the United States. Namely, American teens are less interested in having a glass of red wine to match their dinner than shotgunning cheap beer in their parents' basements.
That Vermont lawmakers would even consider such a proposal seriously enough to create a task force and throw precious resources in its direction is ludicrous, almost as ludicrous as dozens of drunk Dartmouth students completing the Ledyard Challenge in a Sprinter van.
