NYT Wants More of the Same On College Drinking
I’m not of the view that lowering the drinking age would bring about any great improvements in public health, especially on college campuses.
Best I can tell, college students binge drink for pretty simple reasons. There is a culture built up around drinking in college, alcohol is easily available and the general lack of responsibilities and rules that are the hallmark of life as an undergradute significantly alter the typical cost-benefit calculations of engaging in risky behavior. Policies that explicilty deal with harm reduction, like amnesty policies for students who seek medical help because of alcohol usage, could probably work, but the idea that one can make college drinking safer by regulating it or bringing it into the fold seems rather farfetched. Binge drinking is dangerous, and students do it because they want to.
But I think this New York Times editorial on binge drinking isn’t particularly insightful. It points out that raising the drinking age has reduced binge drinking among young people — except for college students. The Times suggests that “Whatever the causes, the solutions almost certainly lie mostly within the colleges — perhaps with better counseling or stronger bans on under-age drinking — not by lowering the legal drinking age.” Well, maybe. Perhaps this research shows that trying to reduce drinking at colleges may not be worth the hassle. If the law isn’t doing enough to deter students from engaging in illegal, risky behavior, than “better counseling” probably won’t help more and “stronger bans” may end up costing a school more in ill will and mistrust than what they gain from a marginal decrease in binge drinking
College binge-drinking makes a lot of sense from an economic point of view. Since it’s illegal for most College students to buy alcohol, their access to drinking tends to be fairly sporadic. So, once you do get it, you drink all you can. Moreover, you tend to substitute towards higher-potentcy stuff those time when you do have access (say, an upperclassman offers to buy it for you).
You see the same phenomenon anytime a drug is made illegal. People did a lot of binge drinking during prohibition. Even with cocaine, people used to take small doses on a semi-regular basis (ie, coca-cola)–as they do now with tobacco, for instance. Making it illegal increased the potency of doses.
There’s nothing wrong with drinking per se. But there’s a lot wrong with the type of drinking that goes on in College–and that has at least something to do with the availability of alcohol as a result of illegality. You’ll notice that other countries with saner laws don’t have these problems.
Thorfinn
July 1, 2009 at 3:04 pm
My personal experience has been that legality makes a huge difference in drinking behavior mostly because it changes the environment in which college students engage in drinking. When you are playing beer pong in someone’s room or at a frat party, there is little to stop you from making the personal decision not to binge. You are surrounded by friends who accept binge drinking as a socially acceptable behavior and are likely doing it on their own. This sort of mentality is exemplified by countless friends who won’t drink at a party where they don’t know anyone, but don’t mind put away a half-dozen shots when in the company of 10 friends.
However, once 21, if (big if) I am doing my drinking in bars, I am a lot less likely to make a fool of myself in front of a room of anonymous strangers, waiters and (possibly later) police. Not to mention, it costs a lot to binge if I’m drinking pints of a local microbrew rather than shotgunning cans of PBR provided freely by any careless upperclassman. The psychology is pretty transparent and anyone who has spent time on a college campus in the last 10 years can attest to the need for a lower drinking age.
Alex
July 3, 2009 at 2:27 pm