Lower Drinking Age For Marines

The Marine Corps Times reported this last week that on April 19 US Marine Corps commandant General James T. Conway issued a change of alcohol policies for Marines under the age of 21. The new rules decriminalize welcome-home beer for underage Marines returning from deployment and giving commanders the authority to hold an 18-and-up kegger on base upon a unit’s return from a war zone. According to North County Times of San Diego, a 1995 rule dictated that underage marines were held to drinking age of the states in which they were stationed. Permitting alcohol consumption is now at the discretion of base commanders.

In addition to this domestic policies, Marines will now be held accountable to the legal drinking age laws of the countries they are stationed in. Previously, Marines under 21 were forced to abide by the 21 year-old drinking age even if the laws made it legal for 18 year-olds to drink. Under the new policies marines will be held to the laws of the country in which they are stationed. If the drinking age is an age lower than 18, an 18 year-old legal drinking age will be enforced. This should be of minimal consequence because of those 17 year-old recruits that exist in the marines few, it would seem, would still be 18 upon deployment.

Critics of the law suggest that increased access to alcohol could lead to increased alcohol-related traffic fatalities for marines stationed at home. However, the marines quoted in the above articles, all of whom support the law, suggest that because these underage marines are already drinking, the new rule will provide an incentive to bring that drinking back on base under the control of the base commander.

Online Forum

Choose Responsibility Director, John McCardell answered questions concerning the proposal to license and educate young adult drinkers. The transcript is here. The forum, I think, was informative for all the parties involved.

"World's Largest Cocktail Party" going underground?

“‘It's not shocking enough (to keep students from drinking again), but it's definitely a different kind of experience,’ Short said,” after the freshman at the University of Georgia spent a night in jail for underage drinking. Recent news out of the University of Georgia show that arrests for underage drinking did not decrease this past year following the communities tougher alcohol policies. While administrators of Georgia’s largest university have sought to curtail their image as a party school—famous for the “world’s largest cocktail party”— their policies of stricter enforcement and tougher penalties have had little effect. The idea behind the administration's push was that if penalties were harsh enough freshman, sophomores, and juniors at UGA would warm up to the fact that for them alcohol is illegal, and that this would make them stop drinking. It failed. This should come as no surprise. When as few as 2 out of every 1000 underage drinkers are ever punished, even large increases in enforcement cannot provide sufficient deterrence for those illegal behaviors. Administrators of the university ought to reassess their draconian policies, because ultimately they only push behavior farther off campus and deeper underground. And while this "out of sight out of mind" mentality is pleasing to the eye, it can do little to improve the drinking culture on campus. Sadly, when it comes to irresponsible drinking it may only be making things worse.

Competing editorials in the Bennington Banner of Vermont show the complexity of the drinking age question. On one hand is a high school administrator, who in his interactions with high school students experiences the problems and tragedies that occur with underage drinking. His reaction is understandable: strengthen enforcement of the current law. After all, the logic holds, if we want young adults to stop drinking, then cracking down on them hard would seem like way to do it. The following day, the editorial board of the Bennington paper, responded to the op-ed, taking the opposite view.

“Ultimately, when those simplistic and repressive controls are finally lifted, there are no internal controls left to take over. . . . As a society, we somehow have to allow teens to drink, if they wish, in supervised, controlled venues — and we have to educate them — before they are allowed into bars and package stores. We can't just hide the booze away and hope they wait until they are 21. Unfortunately, that's what we are doing today.”

And so we are left with two choices, to maintain the status quo, to accept that this is the best we can do, or to try something different, something new and innovative. On the surface, a 21 year-old drinking ought to help keep alcohol from reaching minors, by the fact that it makes alcohol illegal to consume and difficult to obtain. In certain cases that may very well be the case. But more often than not, those classified by the law as “underage” are obtaining and drinking alcohol. In the end, we are faced with a law that is out of step with our cultural attitudes towards alcohol, which encourages violation and breeds disrespect for law.

In the more than two decades that have passed since its implementation, the 21 year-old drinking age has created a climate in which terms like “binge” and “pregame” have come to describe young peoples’ choices about alcohol. The goal-oriented drinking that is now common under the current law, though dangerous, may more importantly be a consequence of the law itself. In an environment where drinking must be kept hidden from the law, the rituals surrounding alcohol consumption come to reflect those environmental pressures. As those rituals become empowered, they come to define and give weight to the culture of drinking itself. Thus, as drinking to evade the law inherently becomes an act of drinking as quickly as possible, those acts of goal-oriented drinking become part of a unique culture.