The Vermont state legislature is currently considering a resolution to ask for Congressional permission to lower the state's legal drinking age without suffering a reduction in federal highway funding, according to state Rep. Margaret Cheney, D-Windsor-Orange-2. The resolution, which would also create a commission to study the effects of lowering the drinking age, was debated by legislators at a Jan. 21 hearing.
The resolution does not actually seek to lower the drinking age but rather to evaluate the consequences of doing so, according to state Rep. David Zuckerman, P-Burlington, who sponsored the resolution.
"There are economic consequences, there are human health consequences and those consequences could be good or bad," Zuckerman said in an interview with The Dartmouth. "The goal is to move the conversation forward and to gather more data before actually pushing for a change in state law."
States that do not set the minimum drinking age at 21 face a 10 percent reduction in federal highway funds under the 1984 National Minimum Drinking Age Act.
Former Middlebury College president John McCardell spoke in favor of lowering the drinking age at the hearing, which took place before the Vermont House committee on General Housing and Military Affairs, he said in an interview with The Dartmouth.
Legislators previously introduced a bill to lower the state drinking age, but it was unsuccessful, according to Cheney.
"One reason that the previous bill didn't get very far is because of questions about whether it would have a financial impact on the state," she said.
The federal penalties have stifled debate about the appropriate drinking age, McCardell said. McCardell founded the organization "Choose Responsibility," which advocates studying the consequences of the current drinking age.
"This is simply an effort to let the debate go forward unimpeded," he said.
The resolution states that the minimum drinking age should be left to state discretion and cites several reasons why 18 would be a more appropriate minimum age.
"A lot of us feel that the current drinking age causes problems of its own, not the least of which is binge drinking," Cheney said.
There is also the safety issue of underage drinking occurring in "clandestine locations," according to McCardell, who said he believes that lowering the drinking age to 18 could resolve this problem.
"The law has simply banished alcohol consumption underground," McCardell said. "One isn't doing shots in a restaurant. One isn't pregaming in a pizza parlor. One isn't playing beer pong or using a funnel in a student activity center."
Other experts who testified at the hearing opposed the resolution. Lowering the drinking age would introduce new problems, according to David Jernigan, professor at the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University, who testified at the hearing.
"The evaluation evidence is overwhelming," Jernigan said in an interview with The Dartmouth. "Study after study after study has found that 21 has saved young people's lives."
A lower drinking age would increase the number of young people dying from alcohol-related causes and would reverse progress that has been made toward reducing underage drinking among certain groups, Jernigan said.
"You would shift the problem of clandestine drinking from colleges to high schools," Jernigan said.
While many point to Europe as a place where a lower drinking age removes the stigma from drinking, causing young people to drink more responsibly, Jernigan said that logic is flawed.
"People extrapolate from their personal experiences," he said, arguing that policy should be based instead on hard facts. "We rely on data and not on anecdotes."
European countries have higher drinking rates among 15- and 16-year-olds than the United States, according to Jernigan.
Zuckerman maintained that lawmakers should at least study the issues related to changing the drinking age.
"There are potential upsides and there are potential downsides, and we need to weigh both of those as a society as a whole," Zuckerman said.
Interim director of Safety and Security Keiselim Montas said he does not think a lower drinking age in Vermont would have an effect on campus drinking. Because Dartmouth is in New Hampshire, students would be unable to take advantage of the proposed lower drinking age in Vermont, he said.
