Should the drinking age be lowered?
An increasing number of college officials are arguing that current drinking laws have failed. Instead of keeping students away from alcohol, they argue, the laws simply drive underage drinking underground and toward unsafe extremes.
Leading the debate for change is John M. McCardell, Jr., president emeritus of Vermont's Middlebury College, who proposes rolling back the legal drinking age from 21 to 18 after granting "drinking licenses" to those who complete an extensive alcohol education program.
When I was just starting college and driving with friends to Ohio to pretend to get drunk on 3.2 beer, I had one answer. Now that I'm an onery old coot who worries that the kid in the car behind me might have been drinking, I have a different one. What you see depends on where you stand. Got a problem with that?
Ah, near-beer memories. Who knew that would be good practice for O'Doul's?
