On my homepage this evening I happened to notice this AP story by writer Barbara Rodriguez. Just in time for school to get back underway, she describes an effort by a number of college presidents to foster a renewed debate on the age to purchase and consume alcohol.
It was actually a story I touched on about 5 1/2 months ago in an article called Sticking up for Amendment 10. In that case, the state of Vermont was planning to study the impact of changing the drinking age, with opponents citing both the increased risk to young adults and the prospect of losing about $17 million in federal highway funding as reasons to continue with a drinking age of 21.
On the other side, I opined that the state should be able to determine its own drinking age if the Tenth Amendment were being properly followed. But for decades the federal government has used its power of the purse as a hammer to get states to pass laws that may not be in the best interest of or necessarily supported by the public at large, but simply the pet issue of someone in Washington. One case in point relates to the drinking age issue – the .08 percent blood-alcohol limit was the crusade of onetime Senator Mike DeWine of Ohio, who lost a daughter in an auto accident caused by a drunk driver. While it’s an event no parent should have to live through, one man’s tragedy does not give him the right to overturn the Founders’ intent.
In fact, the drinking age statement by the college presidents and their nascent movement, dubbed the Amethyst Initiative, dosen’t specifically call for the repeal of the 24-year-old National Minimum Drinking Age Act; just an honest debate on the subject. And I suspect that even if the federal act were repealed and the issue brought back to the state level most would opt to maintain the drinking age at 21.
It’s unfortunate that the AP story didn’t extend itself to either that portion of the debate or follow up on Vermont’s earlier efforts. However, it served for me to reopen the call for the federal government to loosen its grip on its absolute power, and I’m hoping this baton is picked up by some of those same Congressmen who are taking part of their recess to convince the few in America remaining who don’t think we should explore and drill for oil that regulations on that aspect of our government need to be relaxed. While many of them seem to understand what federalism as intended by our Founding Fathers really means, the effort also needs to be made to educate the public on states’ rights as well.
Since the AP story didn’t do that, I took it upon myself to show that this new group can be much more useful than it may appear on the surface. All it would take is these same college presidents to make it part of a primer on the proper role of government – unfortunately I’m not seeing that happening.
