Last fall, a group of over 100 college presidents – including the heads of Dartmouth, Virginia Tech and Duke – signed a declaration stating that the 21-year-old drinking age is not working, and fireworks went off.
But the college presidents got what they wanted: a national debate about the drinking age.
When the age was raised to 21 in the mid-1980s, the goal was to reduce highway fatalities. But everyone knows that the 21 age limit hasn’t stopped minors from drinking.
And now some experts believe it’s actually contributing to an increase in extreme drinking.
This is what the former president of Middlebury College in Vermont, John McCardell, believes and it’s why he started the movement dedicated to lowering the age back to 18. It may seem counterintuitive, but he argues that lowering the age will make kids safer.
