Bazola 1

Thierry L Bazola
ENG 112-78
Instructor: Connie Douglas
Round Table Essay
25 October, 2016
The Legal Drinking Age in America: Voices At The Table
The American society is one of the most divide in the world not in the term of living
together like people, but like a community where a big number of subject are controversial and
sometimes almost impossible to share a point of view. If you are looking for this kind of subject,
the minimum age drinking law can prove to you how different voices are issued regard of
interest, sciences disciplinary, or just the fact to be more concern by the problems that drunk
drivers caused to the society; especially teens drivers. You need to underline that for most the
group that opposes the lowering of the minimum legal drinking age in the US, teens and young
under twenty-one are more responsibly of car accident after drinking illegally. It difficult to
reach a solid conclusion when it about lowering the minimum age to drink alcohol in America
for many reasons like said, but scientists also have the same problem with this issue . The
limitations are attached to the designs and methodologies used in order to prove that your
position is the best: lowering or not lowering Montgomery affirmed that for example, some of
the studies were epidemiological in nature, where researchers examined natural occurring
variations in individuals. Thus, new experimental designs are warranted to draw causal
inferences. ( Main ) Different point of view or argument have to be considered as voices

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issued by groups or individuals to present the idea of lowering the minimum age drinking law
like good or bad .
For this round table, multitude voices can be present ,but three are the most important:
Mothers against Drunk Driving (MADD), the Amethyst voice and the moral or religious voice.
Hamilton can the best describe the power and the importance of MADD like voice by this word
many organizations have been born from tragedy, but few are as widely recognized, powerful,
and enduring as Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD). Candy Lightner founded Mothers
Against Drunk Driving (MADD) in 1980 in response to the death of her daughter in a tragically
car accident cause by a drunk driver who was a repeat offender. Since the beginning, the goal of
MADD was to reduce drunk driving traffic fatalities and the organization has been highly
effective in raising public disapproval of drunk driving. The effort have paid if you consider the
proportion of traffic fatalities that are alcohol-related like dropped dramatically in many states
and for many years of activism . Talk about drinking law without citing this important group is
The second voice can be consider oppose to the first and surprising by his consistency. Klein
Axel writing about this particular voice underscores the origin of this particular voice : refer to
the Amethyst initiative set up by the principles of some one hundred US universities,
campaigning for a lowering of the drinking age from twenty-one to eighteen because it may
promote moderation. Between those two voices, the third and, last voice for this round table is
the moral voice. It is an important voice if you want to found a good perception of this topic
without the emotion of a mother who lost her girl by accident and the president of 100 US
universities.

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The "loudest" voice on the matter of lowering the minimum legal drinking age is a
group called Mothers against drunk driving (MADD). According to Hamilton, the mission
of Mothers against Drunk Driving is to stop drunk driving, support the victims of this violent
crime, and prevent underage drinking. The MADD has estimated that forty percent of reduction
in fatalities since the early 1980s can be explain by the change in the President Reagans law
even though there is still a long way to go before changing the way teens and other adult drink
and drive. The fight for zero accident related to a drunk driver passed by public education:
driving is not an accident is the slogan of the MADD.
This group thinks that those injured or killed in drunk driving collisions are not
"accident" victims. Concretely the choice is clear drive or drink. An impaired driver can change
the life of all family when he did not make the good choice. Education and advocating for the
maintain of the law like signed by President Reagan is the principal duty of MADD and more
than twenty years of longstanding have a consequence; the number of accident related to drunk
driver have been reduced , but also deaths and injuries due to the irresponsible and reckless acts
of drunk drivers . The new level of collaboration between MADD and public without forget
private institution is a clear proof that the action of this important organization brings attention to
the serious health and safety issue of drunk driving in general and particularly among young like
said by David Strickland, Administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration :
the dangers of driving under the influence of alcohol, and a growing body of research indicates
that drugged driving is also a concern--especially for young drivers aged 15-20 who are at

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particularly high risk for traffic crashes and really need to remain fully alert and focused on
driving," (Journal of Transportation)

The viewpoint held by those in the education side with college and university is the
second interesting voice. Main underlined the real situation inside the USs campus with this
world It seems that the presidents of hundred thirty-five colleges, including elite schools, large
universities, and small state schools find themselves so exasperated with the amount of alcohol
guzzled by undergraduates - or more to the point, the trouble the undergraduates get into while
inebriated - that they now beseech lawmakers to "rethink 21," an elegant and rather roundabout
way of saying. The conclusion after the review of the situation is clear: Let undergrad drink
with the sanction of the law. (Gilroy) Before the initiative not too many people were talking
about this very sensible question of lowering the legal age for drinking in the US. The big
advantage of the initiative is to create a public dialogue about the drinking age, resulting in
media coverage and changing the way many who think about the future of the law on different
level: federal or state. The Amethyst Initiatives can be define as a statement signed by 135
college presidents and chancellors whom take no formal position, unlike Choose Responsibility
(another initiative from different group using the student level of the situation) , but the statement
says "21 is not working" and asks "How many times must we relearn the lessons of Prohibition?"
Using the common sense the Initiative draws comparisons to other age-of-majority rights
conferred on eighteenyear-olds, such as voting and serving in the military, and calls upon
elected officials to consider "whether current public policies are in line with current realities
( Gilroy )

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The Amethyst Initiative considers the phenomenon of underage drinking as a tidal wave
that society cannot stop The law cannot change what young people want to do when they are
alone inside the campus. The only one way to change this situation is education like said by
Gilroy , but at colleges and universities, the law does have other effects: it pushed drinking into
hiding, heightened its risks, including risks from drunken driving; and it prevented us from
addressing drinking with students as an issue of responsible choice." (Gilroy)
The third and final voice to be heard is the voice of the group constituted by the moralist.
Like a professor of religious studies, Dennis Tamburello a Franciscan friar is one of those can
represent a religious or moral voice on the matter of drinking law. For him, three facts have to be
consider before thinking change in the law: there are no easy solutions, teenagers who drink
Excessively Risk Severe Dangers, abusing the body is immoral. The friar estimate that the legal
drinking age of twenty-one, far from being the solution to the problem of underage drinking, has
forced young adults eighteen to twenty to drink illegally and without supervision. Learning how
to drink responsibly is the convenient way to save young adult from killing other people. If the
legal drinking age cannot be lowered as soon we think, a change in the American culture of
drinking is the first step for a change, along with more responsible and mature behavior by
teenagers. The moral point of view regarding the question of drink or not is a big question not
only for the eighteen to twenty-one years-old. It concerns all the society and can become
progressively philosophical and abstract. In a real situation, the choice to this question demands
particular attention because real consequences in the lives of real people can change everything.
The multi-cultural environment where whe are living today dont help to make the good
decision, the answers aren't so readily at hand.

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In the end, the three voices presented in this essay are not the exclusive about the topic
but they are some kind of global view on this matter. Even though the three are different but they
all share one idea: America needs a public debate on lowering or not the minimum legal drinking
age. If the MADD bases his point of view on the safety side using the emotion of the loosing of
the love one, the Amethyst Initiative is a concrete solution on a problem that touch every
American campus in the USA with the regard of more than hundred president or chancellor of
those prestigious school and, finally the last voice with moral intensity remember the importance
of life and the respect for that by not abusing alcohol. Differing points of view have been
exposed in this round table with three voices having different perception of the same issue. Up to
the public to decide for themselves what they feel the advantages and the disadvantages of
lowering or not the drinking minimum legal age in America. Like said the choice is not easy , but
realism is one idea that can help.

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Work cited

Drugs and Alcohol Today 8.4. (2008): 2-3. ProQuest. Web. 27 Oct. 2016.

Gilroy, Marilyn. "STUDENT DRINKING: New Strategies but no Magic Bullet." The
Education
Digest 75.3 (2009): 52-5. ProQuest. Web. 27 Oct. 2016.

Hamilton, Wendy J. "Mothers Against Drunk Driving-MADD in the USA." Injury

Prevention 6.2 (2000): 90. ProQuest. Web. 20 Oct. 2016.

Main, Carla T. "Underage Drinking and the Drinking Age." Policy Review.155 (2009):
33-46. ProQuest. Web. 15 Sep. 2016.

Montgomery JM, Foley KL, Wolfson M. Enforcing the minimum drinking age: state,
local and agency characteristics associated with compliance checks and Cops in Shops programs.
Addiction 2006; 101:22331.

"Mothers Against Drunk Driving; White House Drug Policy Director and Mothers
Against Drunk Driving Unite to Combat Drugged Driving; Call on Parents to Act to Reduce
Significant Public Safety Threat." Journal of Transportation (2011): 9. ProQuest. Web. 1 Nov.
2016.

Tamburello, Friar Dennis. "The Legal Drinking Age Exacerbates Underage

Drinking." Should the Legal Drinking Age Be Lowered? Ed. Stefan Kiesbye. Detroit:
Greenhaven Press, 2008. At Issue. Rpt. from "Clean and Sober." Timesunion.com 15 July 2006.
Opposing Viewpoints in Context. Web. 13 Oct. 2016.

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