Gubernatorial Candidates Weigh in on Alcoholic Beverage Laws and Regulations

Two of the three candidates for Virginia governor in 2013 have addressed questions concerning the state's alcoholic beverage laws, with special scrutiny on the Alcoholic Beverage Control board (ABC) and the scope of its authority.

Ken Cuccinelli in Charlottesville on May 20, 2013

Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli characterized as “overkill” an ABC sting operation in Charlottesville that resulted in a University of Virginia coed spending a night in jail and being charged with three felonies.

Cuccinelli, who is also the 2013 Republican nominee for governor, made his remarks during a July 3 interview with radio host Coy Barefoot on WCHV-FM in Charlottesville.

The April 11 incident has received national attention since the charges against Elizabeth Daly were dropped by Charlottesville Commonwealth's Attorney Dave Chapman on June 27. Change.org circulated a petition demanding that the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control apologize to Daly and her two companions and to discipline the officers involved.

Late in the evening of April 11, Daly and two friends purchased cookie dough, ice cream, and canned sparkling water at the Harris Teeter store in Barracks Road Shopping Center. A group of six ABC agents, mistaking the water for beer, approached them.

The women did not recognize the agents as law enforcement personnel, called 911 to report their fears, panicked, and drove away. Daly was subsequently charged with striking two of the agents with her car and evading arrest, charges that brought with them the threat of up to 15 years in prison.


Well-placed concern
“I think your concern for overkill is well-placed,” Cuccinelli told Barefoot. “Mind you, I have not spoken to the agency about this,” he explained, so his knowledge of the situation has been based upon press reports.

However, Cuccinelli added, “these folks have a job to do, but do you really need a half dozen of them. Let's say this was hard liquor” that Daly allegedly bought. “So what?”

Based on the descriptions he had seen, the Attorney General said, “it seems to me that frankly – even if she bought beer or something – she got more than enough punishment in jail.”

Cuccinelli said, putting himself in the shoes of the women that night, “if I see a bunch of men surrounding me, that's going to instill a lot of fear in me.”


'Extreme measures'
Noting that, as an undergraduate at UVA, he had helped start a sexual assault prevention group on campus, Cuccinelli explained that he is “glad it didn't turn out worse than it did. It would have turned out worse for the agents. If I'm defending myself and I'm in my car, and I'm a young woman worried about sexual assault, I'm going to use extreme measures to keep myself safe.”

Why, he asked, “do we have six ABC agents staking out one store? It doesn't seem particularly wise.   You end up with confrontations like this that could turn out a lot worse.”

Asked by Barefoot if he would teach his daughters to behave with the same sort of caution that Daly and her companions displayed that night, Cuccinelli exclaimed: “Absoflippinlutely!”

“I would never suggest to my daughters that they just trust what they've been told,” by people who might or might not be law enforcement officers. Those women, he said, “did exactly the right thing” by calling 911 and attempting to drive to the nearest police station.

“The important thing for us on the law enforcement side is we need to learn from this,” Cuccinelli said. “We need to be more concerned about the perspective of the person on the street.”

He pointed out that “the average person buying alcohol, even if they're buying it illegally, do not have the idea of escalating [the act] violently to complete the crime.”

Cuccinelli expressed confidence that higher-level officials at the ABC has “had some serious conversations with [the agents] about their tactics.”

Looking forward, the gubernatorial candidate concluded, “what the rest of us need to do is [to ensure] the likelihood of this ever happening again gets as close to zero as we can make it.”

In an interview with me at a campaign stop in Richmond, Libertarian Party gubernatorial nominee Robert Sarvis expressed his own views on Virginia's liquor laws.

Robert Sarvis in Charlottesville on August 5, 2013

When current Governor Bob McDonnell took office in 2010, the first major proposal that made was to privatize the wholesale and retail sales operations that put Virginia in the liquor business. “Privatizing the ABC” was a rallying cry for the McDonnell administration through the summer and fall of 2010, but when the General Assembly considered his proposals during its 2011 session, it rejected them.

'No-brainer'
“ABC privatization is just a no-brainer for a lot of reasons,” Sarvis said. “That's something that I'm going to press for.”

Sarvis's “approach to liquor laws should be part of a greater push for reform of drug laws,” he added. “We should rationalize our laws in both areas so that we're not having government try [to] do everything and micromanage our lives.”

How could Sarvis succeed where McDonnell failed?

“I'm uniquely positioned to work with people in both parties on issues that would just be non-starters if you have a major-party governor,” he said. “The opposing party in the legislature is going to be obstructionist but” Sarvis believes he can work with the General Assembly “on that and many other issues.”

Success, he said, depends on “not just ramming through what I want” but “it's giving voice to the people” that matters.

'Freedom creates responsibility'
“We should enable people,” he explained, “to engage in activities they want to and be responsible. Freedom creates responsibility just as responsible citizens appreciate freedom. You can't have one without the other.”

The government monopoly on liquor sales in Virginia, Sarvis said, is “partly a nanny-state thing and partly a government-control issue. The government is afraid of relinquishing control over that – it's a moneymaker – [but] we should not be having the government run industries for the purpose of raising money” to add to state coffers.

On a related matter, Sarvis said he is “certainly open to” returning Virginia's minimum legal drinking age to 18.

“Our prohibitionist mentality and treating people like children oftentimes creates the problems that we think are being addressed by the laws that we've created,” and that includes drinking-age laws, he said.

In considering changing the drinking-age laws, Sarvis said, “I'm really pushing for respecting people's freedom and responsibility.”

Sarvis also addressed ABC issues at a press conference in Charlottesville on August 5.

The candidate spoke outside the ABC store located in the Barracks Road Shopping Center, the place where Elizabeth Daly and her companions were ambushed by ABC agents on the night of April 11.

(This article is adapted from two previously published pieces on Examiner.com.)

Combating Drunk Driving Without Compromising Liberty and Safety

(This article originally appeared on Virginia Politics on Demand on May 28, 2013.)

This past Memorial Day weekend marked the start of the summer driving season, and with it came warnings about drunk driving and other traffic hazards.  As Hoai-Tran Bui reported for WTOP radio in Washington:

Memorial Day weekend is one of the most dangerous holidays of the year for drivers.

Kurt Erickson, with the Washington Regional Alcohol Program, says there's a significant increase in drunken driving deaths during Memorial Day weekend.

In 2011 (the latest year that data is available), 406 people lost their lives nationwide during the three-day weekend, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA).

"Forty percent of all traffic fatalities that happen in this country over Memorial Day were actually caused by drunk drivers," Erickson says. "That compares to 31 percent during the other parts of the year."

The good news in Virginia is that, overall, Memorial Day traffic accidents declined this year, according to Doris Taylor at WTKR-TV in Hampton Roads:

Officials say the state of Virginia had a major decline in fatalities on Memorial Day Weekend this year. They investigated about 620 crashes that resulted in 141 injuries and 7 deaths.

The number of deaths dropped into the single digits this year, the first time since 2009.

Preliminary reports show that seven people lost their lives this weekend in traffic accidents all over the state including one in Newport News, Carroll County and Southampton.

Police also stopped 11, 9900 [sic] speeders and 2,609 reckless drivers. Officers were able to arrest 137 drunk drivers.

These statistics arrive in the context of a recent call by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) to revise the definition of drunkenness for purposes of arresting drivers who are "under the influence."

With the utopian goal of "reaching zero" drunk-driving fatalities, the NTSB recognizes in a report released May 14 that

the number of lives lost annually in alcohol-impaired-driver-related crashes declined 53 percent, from 21,113 in 1982 to 9,878 in 2011; and the percentage of highway fatalities resulting from alcohol-involved crashes is down from 48 percent in 1982 to about 31 percent today.

Despite this notable record of success over the past three decades, however, the NTSB recommends that, although "the majority of alcohol-impaired drivers in fatal crashes have BAC levels well over 0.08,"

the 50 states, the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, and the District of Columbia establish a per se BAC limit of 0.05 or lower for all drivers who are not already required to adhere to lower BAC limits.

The Chicago Tribune's Steve Chapman explains the practical effect of adopting this recommendation:

From the standpoint of individual behavior, that would be a significant change. A 180-lb. man could be legally impaired if he had three drinks in an hour (versus four drinks today) while a 140-lb. woman could earn a set of handcuffs with just two drinks in an hour (compared to three under the current rule).

Some 20 years ago, when the Virginia General Assembly was considering a bill to lower the blood alcohol concentration threshold for drunk driving from 0.10 to 0.08, I testified before the Senate Courts of Justice Committee (then chaired by Arlington Democrat Edward Holland) alongside Candy Lightner, the founder of Mothers Against Drunk Driving.

We both argued against a change in the law, pointing out that revising the technical definition of impairment downward would simply redistribute law enforcement resources without actually preventing any drunk-driving incidents. Lightner said that educational efforts and changes in the culture -- that is, changing people's attitudes about the acceptability of driving while intoxicated -- would be more effective.

Lightner also said:

Half of the drinking drivers involved in fatal crashes have a BAC of 0.17 or greater. Even among young people aged 16 to 24, the great majority of deaths involve drinkers with a BAC of at least 0.15 percent. Lowering the blood alcohol content won't make a difference to these offenders.

I drew on research that probably still holds true:

Minnesota Judge Dennis Challeen, who over the past 30 years has sentenced hundreds of people for DWI violations, agrees with Lightner. "Most drunk driver fatalities," he notes, "have BAC levels close to 0.20, twice the legal limit. If lawmakers reduce the limit to 0.08, they are simply catching more of the wrong people, the people who are not the problem."

Judge Challeen further argues that stricter laws will be ineffective because those who do not need to be sanctioned -- law-abiding citizens and responsible drinkers -- are most likely to be "self-correcting," while chronic drunks and scofflaws are least likely to respond to harsher penalties.

The fact is, by changing the definition of drunkenness, we enable the police to arrest more people. That may seem tough, but the effect is clogging the courts with people who are not really the problem, creating conditions whereby truly dangerous people are let off without punishment so that we can make room for the minor offender.

The author of Confronting Drunk Driving, Professor H. Laurence Ross, estimates a potential increase of 60 percent of DWI arrests under the new definition with the possibility of no decrease in fatalities. "Adoption of 0.08 percent BAC has not to date been accompanied by any comparable new investments in police resources," Dr. Ross reports, "thus diluting an already inadequate control system. The effect may well be to reduce the chances of any impaired drivers being arrested."

Candy Lightner argued then that

Rather than put our limited resources into laws that fail to address the real problem, we need better enforcement of existing laws and proven policies that have demonstrated a significant impact... If we really want to save lives, let's go after the most dangerous drivers on the road. Putting our trust in new laws and regulations that only address the tip of the iceberg will not make our highways safer.

That point is echoed by Steve Chapman in his reaction to the NTSB's most recent recommendations:

Under a tighter BAC, the same number of cops will be chasing a lot more offenders. An officer who is busy arresting someone with a .05 level, who poses a small danger, will not be able to arrest someone with a .10 or .15 level, who poses a huge danger....

It may come as a surprise to hear that the organization that deserves much of the credit for raising public awareness of the problem, Mothers Against Drunk Driving, has declined to endorse this proposal. It prefers to focus on greater efforts to enforce existing laws, while requiring ignition interlocks for every DUI offender.

NTSB acknowledges this last policy would save some 1,100 lives per year -- far more than a lower BAC would save. It also has the virtue of disabling the few guilty without inconveniencing the many innocent.

In a free society, trying to reach zero carries too high a cost. Better to settle for making progress.

Utah was the first state to change its BAC definition to 0.08 in 1983. Other states followed slowly on their own initiative, but it was federal carrot-and-stick incentives that eventually forced the rest of the country into uniformity, regardless of the effectiveness of the legislation on solving the problem it purported to address.

While we will hear protests from state capitals -- including Richmond -- against the NTSB's most recent recommendations, it won't be long before Congress acts and threatens to withhold federal highway funding from any state that does not go along with the proposal. It's only a matter of time, and it won't save any lives or property.

Video Interview with Garrett Peck

On Friday night, I was able to nab an exclusive interview with Arlington-based author Garrett Peck, who was in Charlottesville to speak about his new book, The Prohibition Hangover: Alcohol in America from Demon Rum to Cult Cabernet, at the Barnes & Noble book store at Barracks Road Shopping Center. Earlier in the day, Peck had spoken in Lexington to a group of VMI cadets at his alma mater and to other area residents.

I first encountered Peck a few weeks ago when I was in D.C. on business. Stuck in traffic on Interstate 66 in mid-afternoon, I tuned to the Kojo Nnamdi Show on WAMU-FM. The conversation was about alcoholic beverage regulation -- a topic that has long interested me -- but it wasn't until the end of the interview that I learned the guest's name and that he was scheduled to speak that night at the Arlington Central Library. Since the library was just a few blocks from where my car would be parked, I decided to attend the presentation.

Peck's talk was interesting and entertaining. (It was accompanied by a slide show with images of the temperance movement and drinking culture.) When he mentioned that he would soon be in Charlottesville to talk about his book, I made a note of it.

That's how I found myself in the religion section of Barnes & Noble last evening, sitting with Garrett Peck and asking him questions about alcoholic beverage regulation, the drinking age, regional differences in attitudes toward alcohol consumption (and preferences for types of beverages), and other topics touched upon in The Prohibition Hangover.

The interview is in two parts of about seven minutes each, both also available on YouTube.

The first part includes introductory material. The second part addresses the most controversial question -- should the drinking age be lowered back to 18 -- and the efforts of groups like the Amethyst Initiative.

Part I:

Part II:

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Two Degrees of Kevin Bacon

Live Arts, Charlottesville's best-known, semiprofessional, community theatre, has announced its 2009-10 season, which includes Glengarry Glen Ross and Gypsy (which will be directed by John Gibson, who is retiring as Live Arts' artistic director next January).

The season will be preceded by a summer musical, Footloose, which promises plenty of opportunities for aspiring young performers from the Charlottesville area to sing and dance.

I reviewed Footloose in its pre-Broadway run at the Kennedy Center in September 1998. While I never did see the show after it reached the Big Stem, I understand that there were some changes made that might have caused me to write a less negative review. (I don't often pan a new musical, but I did in this case.) Testing a show out of town is meant to get rid of some of the kinks and to respond to the criticisms of reviewers and audiences.

It turned out that Footloose received four Tony Award nominations: for actress in a musical, book of a musical, choreographer, and original musical score. Four nominations, but no wins. Still, despite mixed reviews, the show had a respectable run on Broadway of just under two years and 709 performances. It also provided the Broadway debuts of 16 of its 34 cast members, which might be some kind of record.

Here is my review, as it appeared in The Metro Herald more than ten years ago:

Footloose: All Sizzle and No Steak
Rick Sincere
Metro Herald Entertainment Editor

The choreography is excellent. The dancing is better. The sets are eye-catching. The songs are infectious. The costumes are colorful. So what makes Footloose, with its expectations of being a firecracker, such a dud?

The new musical at the Kennedy Center, based on the 1984 film of the same name and headed to a Broadway opening next month, simply does not live up to its promise. Despite individual aspects that are admirable, Footloose ends up being much less than the sum of its parts. It is flashy but ultimately empty. It is, to steal a phrase from advertising, all sizzle and no steak.

Footloose, the movie, produced a raft of hit songs, including the title number, "Almost Paradise," and "Let's Hear It for the Boy," which garnered an Academy Award nomination for composer Tom Snow and lyricist/librettist Dean Pitchford. It made Kevin Bacon a star. Its story about a small town in the Bible Belt where dancing is forbidden has become well-known.

Footloose, the play, fails on several levels, both in conception and execution.

One conceptual problem is present in both the movie and the play. The fundamental plot device is logically, if not dramatically, flawed. In both versions, newcomer Ren McCormack (Jeremy Kushnier), is told that the town of Bomont's ban on dancing was legislated after a car accident took the lives of four teenagers, at least one of whom was drinking, when they were driving home from a dance in neighboring Baylor County.

If the fatal dance was in Baylor County, why ban dancing in Bomont? It would make more sense either to prohibit dancing in Baylor County (an unlikely prospect for Bomont citizens) or to make sure that Bomont teenagers who want to dance and have a good time are able to stay close to home, supervised by caring adult chaperons, so that they will avoid the dangers of driving under the influence. This dancing ban makes as much sense as contemporary "zero tolerance" policies for alcohol use by the under-21 set, which is more likely to drive drinking underground (far from the moderating influence of adults) than to teach young people how to drink responsibly. (This may be a topic for another day.)

Moreover, the creative team -- Tony-winning director Walter Bobbie, whose smash hit Chicago revival played the National Theatre in Washington last year, songwriters Snow and Pitchford, and choreographer A.C. Ciulla -- seems to have been unable to make up its collective mind about Footloose's time-frame. Is it set in the ‘80s, like the movie? Most of the costumes suggest that. Or is it set in the ‘90s, today? At least one reference to the Internet indicates that. But perhaps it is set in the ‘70s? The formalwear in the final scene could be straight out of the new Fox TV comedy, "That '70s Show," and some of the stage sets could be straight out of a revival of Grease (which was, after all, a ‘70s phenomenon, despite its nostalgia for the 1950s). So there is this confusion.

Then there is the execution.

First, the plot and characters. For a show about dancing, with considerable "bells and whistles," as well as a score that's 50 percent rock-and-roll, Footloose lacks energy. There is nothing that drives it forward. Because the ending is predictable, the conflict that is meant to carry us along seems empty. The characters, as a consequence, seem shallow, two-dimensional. It is hard for us to care about them. Footloose is uncompelling.

Second, the songs: In addition to the songs from Footloose, the movie, Snow and Pitchford have produced nine new songs for this stage production. The movie songs are all written as Top 40 hits to be used as background music in a film soundtrack -- not that there's anything wrong with that. (As some have noted, Top 40 provides us, certainly in our teen years if not beyond, with the "soundtrack of our lives.") Yet in this context -- with the exception of "Almost Paradise," which fits well here -- the film's songs seem imposed from above on a structure that cannot support them. As a result, they feel uncomfortably disengaged from everything around them -- including the audience.

The nine new songs, however, are more "musical theatre" numbers. They fit snugly into their context and breathe life into the characters who sing them. They advance the plot and help the audience to understand what is going on. Especially good are "Learning to Be Silent," a duet for Vi Moore, the preacher's wife (Dee Hoty) and Ethel McCormack, Ren's mother (Catherine Cox), and "Can You Find It in Your Heart?," a solo number for Vi later reprised by her husband, the Reverend Shaw Moore (Martin Vidnovic). On the other hand, Ren's big number, "Dancing Is Not a Crime," his address to the town council pleading for the repeal of the dance ban -- what is it? Is it a patter song? Is it rap, is it hip-hop? Whatever it is, it doesn't work.

Despite this wealth of material -- unevenly distributed, to be sure -- the creative team seems to lack confidence in their product. One sign of this: The biggest hit from the movie, "Let's Hear It for the Boy" (ably sung by Stacy Francis, as Rusty, and the company), was greeted by applause from the audience within the first two measures of music -- a surefire crowd pleaser. One would anticipate a pre-written encore for this number. No such luck. Two scenes later, however, an amusing but unexceptional novelty number, "Mama Says" (sung by Tom Plotkin as Willard Hewitt, Ren, and three boys from the chorus), was given an encore, despite tepid applause after the first go-around. Go figure.

The biggest problem with the music, however, might simply be in its delivery. Songs sung by more than one person, especially full-company numbers, are almost incomprehensible. The sound was always muddy. This could be the fault of the sound designer, Tony Meola. Or it could be blamed on the vocal arrangements by Doug Katsaros.

More likely, the fault lies with electronic amplification itself. Electronic amplification -- especially the ubiquitous body microphones -- is the musical theatre equivalent of the aluminum baseball bat. It encourages laziness on the part of the performer, who should be using his or her full vocal faculties -- mouth, larynx, head, lungs, and body -- to project to the back of the house. To do otherwise actually damages the performer's voice. The size of the auditorium, even in a large space like the Kennedy Center Opera House, should be no excuse for over-reliance on electronic amplification devices. At best, microphones and speakers should be used as a minor enhancement for the sound from the stage, not as a substitute for vocal projection.

The contrast between the older and younger performers in this production is telling. Martin Vidnovic, who had his Broadway debut in 1976 in another failed musical, Home Sweet Homer, Dee Hoty, and Catherine Cox -- the principal adults in Footloose -- come through loud and clear. They know how to enunciate and how to project their voices properly. Their voices carry naturally through the auditorium so that electronic amplification supplements their natural talent rather than overpowers it. On the other hand, the younger cast members, including some of the principals, come across like a tea party of James Dean and Marlon Brando wannabes -- rhubarbing, mumbling, and swallowing their words.

What's the difference? Hoty, like Vidnovic and Cox (who played opposite each other as expectant parents in Baby, a short-lived 1983 musical whose cast album is now a cult favorite), grew up in the theatre in a pre-electronic era. The younger singers have grown to rely on microphones as a crutch. It shows.

Footloose is scheduled to open on Broadway in October, with a national tour planned for January 1999. If they want to draw audiences large enough to carry out their plans, the producers had better arrange multiple spots to plug the play on the "Rosie O'Donnell Show" and the "Late Show with David Letterman." In the meantime, Martin Vidnovic should start softening the blow for his enthusiastic young comrades, most of whom are making their Broadway debuts, by dusting off his anecdotes about working with Yul Brynner during the single Broadway performance of Home Sweet Homer.

Otherwise, the cast and crew should pray for the resurrection of Ed Sullivan, because only raw publicity of that magnitude can rescue Footloose from becoming a Broadway footnote.

Forgive me for liking my own work, but I love that reference to Home Sweet Homer. Like the legendary Moose Murders and the underrated Glory Days, it is notorious for having just one official performance on Broadway. I suspect this blogpost will show up on searches by people intrigued by Broadway trivia or those trying to settle a bar bet.

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Plan Your SOTU Party Now

President George W. Bush will make his final State of the Union Address a week from today, on Monday, January 28, before a Joint Session of Congress at the U.S. Capitol. John McCaslin offers some ideas for how best to enjoy the speech in his "Inside the Beltway" column, which appears in the Washington Times and other newspapers:

We had reminded readers [January 17] that President Bush's final State of the Union address will be delivered on Monday, Jan. 28, at 9 p.m.

Now we are reminded of a popular pastime held each year, "The State of the Union Drinking Game 2008."

Organizers say: "If all goes well, you'll be unconscious by the time they show the other party's response."

New rules will be in place this year, but last year, every time the president said "Mahmoud Ahmadinejad," players had to take two gulps of their chosen beverage, and swallow a third if Mr. Bush pronounced the Iranian president's name correctly.

In addition, players had to take one shot of extra-virgin olive oil every time Mr. Bush said "addicted to oil," as well as one shot of tequila when he said "illegal immigration."

Coincidentally, I just bought a bottle of tequila last week, so now I'm thinking of hosting a viewing party for this year's SOTU. Anyone care to join me?

Vermont Mulls Drinking Age Reform

Loyal readers of this blog will recall that, back on March 8, I posted an article with arguments for returning to the 18-year drinking age.

I refuse to take credit, but now there is a robust debate in the state of Vermont on this issue. A Republican state legislator has introduced a bill that would reduce the drinking age in Vermont from 21 to 18.

According to this morning's New York Times:

[Richard C.] Marron, a four-term legislator who is vice chairman of the appropriations committee, decided that the law needed changing, and he has introduced a bill to lower the drinking age to 18, setting off a debate about public safety, age discrimination and the rights of young people as well as whether it is possible to teach teenagers to drink responsibly.

"Now we have a legal age of 18 to do everything else, but you can't drink until you're 21," Mr. Marron said. "I'm not pushing it to the level of it being unconstitutional, but I do think it's a form of age discrimination. If we did something else, like said you couldn't use a public campsite until you're 21, we would have an equal-protection-of-laws issue."

Although the bill is considered unlikely to pass, because Vermont would lose millions of dollars in federal highway funding, the Times notes that

17 lawmakers have signed on as co-sponsors, and other legislators said they might be willing to consider such a bill if not for the loss of federal money. Even Gov. Jim Douglas, a Republican, might see some logic in the proposal if the federal highway money was not involved, said his spokesman, Jason Gibbs.

"Philosophically, it's difficult to reconcile the notion that you can enlist in the military, serve your country, go to war, but not go into your local pub and get a draft beer," Mr. Gibbs said.

There used to be an expression about presidential politics: "As Maine goes, so goes the nation." That was changed in 1936, when Maine was one of only two states to vote for Alf Landon instead of Franklin D. Roosevelt: "As Maine goes, so goes Vermont."

Now it seems that the roles may be reversed: "As Vermont goes, so goes Maine." At least, that is what is implied by the headline of an opinion piece in Monday's Kennebec Journal, "Maine should lower drinking age to 18." Unfortunately, it turns out to be a response by Alex Koroknay-Palicz of the National Youth Rights Associationto a pro-prohibitionist editorial published in the newspaper on April 2. Koroknay-Palicz writes:

As the newspaper wrote, it is "impossible to count the number of lives that have been saved as a result" of the 21 drinking age -- impossible because it has not saved anyone's life. In the three years after Vermont raised the drinking age, alcohol-related traffic fatalities in the state increased an average of 20 percent. Nationally, studies prove that raising the drinking age to 21 had no effect on reducing drunken driving. All it did was transfer the lives lost from 18-to-20-year-olds to 21-to-24-year-olds.

This proposal is not a reckless or dangerous idea done with no regard for the health and safety of the nation. It is reckless to pretend our law is working and ignore the facts that show otherwise.

The truth is that a drinking age of 21 is bad for health and safety and bad for the civil rights of our young adults. It is bad for Vermont and for Maine.

The debate is reaching beyond New England. In Indiana, a columnist for the Ball State Daily News recalls a conversation with a parent:

My mother shares stories with me about her college days. She tells me about the parties that she would go to and the sit-ins and the activism and protests. We then get into a discussion about drinking now.

"You should be able to drink alcohol legally," she tells me, and of course, I agree.

Why shouldn't people under 21 drink? Why is the drinking age so high? Why am I, and others like me, unable to enjoy all of the rights of a citizen in the United States? Isn't this supposed to be the "land of the free"?

The writer, Jessica Kerman, concludes:

The drinking age needs to be lowered. Eighteen-year-olds should be considered complete citizens of the United States and not a lower class of individuals who must pay taxes and still not receive full rights from the government.

In Virginia, a number of readers of the Radford Tartan at Radford University weighed in on the topic, sparked by an opinion article by freshman Catherine Maurakis, who wrote:

Not being able to drink until I am 21 is an insult to my integrity. The youth of America is not all hooligans and crazies. We are working to be the future of this country. Many of us can handle theorems and processes and do calculations, in not just math class, but any other science related courses. And if those of us don’t know something, we will spend hours in the library learning it, so we don’t fail. Plus after all of that, we all have to go back to our dorm rooms and apartments and clean, do laundry, cook and put up with our annoying roommate. Yet we cannot be trusted to have a drink. We spend our days living as adults, and if we don’t we are chided for it. But when it comes nighttime, we are still treated as children.

I for one am getting tired of the black “NO’s” on my hands when I go to a bar and reveal my age. I think it is time for the government to shape up a little bit. Maybe they should start looking at the young adults of this country as young adults and instead of lecturing us about how we will hurt ourselves, they could show a little trust and really make us feel like adults.

Of course, this whole debate could be moot, since underage drinking will occur regardless of laws against it. You could lower the drinking age to 16 (as it is set in Germany and other countries) and 15-year-olds would drink or you could raise it to 25 (as is being discussed in Massachusetts) and 24-year-olds would drink. As noted in C-Ville, a weekly tabloid published in Charlottesville, in its April 12-18 issue, "Underage drinking is a prominent issue in Virginia, where 76 percent of high school seniors and 66 percent of 10th graders said in a 2001 survey that they drank."

Speaking of the Drinking Age ...

In my previous post, I noted that the Moffatt triplets of Canada are now able to drink alcoholic beverages in the United States, because today is their 21st birthday.

Over the years, I have had numerous occasions to comment on the absurdity of the uniform drinking age in the United States. Earlier today, while moving some furniture, I came across a photocopy of an article I wrote, which appeared in the Roanoke Times and World News on August 16, 1991, under the unwieldy headline: "'Forbidden Fruit' / Teen Drinking: Why the problem? Age limit gives booze its allure." (Another article, by Baltimore Evening Sun columnist Dan Rodricks, was coupled with mine, with its own subhead, "Adults send mixed messages.")

While running for the House of Delegates in the 49th District (Arlington County) in 1993, my campaign manager, the late David Morris, came up with the idea of sending a targeted mailing to voters aged 18, 19, and 20, emphasizing my interest in returning to a rational drinking age that corresponds to the age of majority.

I remember clearly that there were precisely 777 voters in that age category. We sent each of them a letter above my signature, urging them to vote for me, and a copy of that Roanoke Times article was enclosed. Whether this tactic gained me any votes, I don't know; at least one prominent Democratic operative told me that her college-age daughter had received my mailing -- so perhaps it had some, minor, psychological effect on our political adversaries.

In searching for a copy of this article on line, I discovered a later version, from June 2001. I am not sure where it was published but someone (not myself) posted it to a Usenet newsgroup, which allows me to crib it for reproduction here:

It's Time for a Rational Drinking Age
Richard E. Sincere, Jr.

The recent misadventures of First Twins Jenna and Barbara Bush with regard to underage drinking have provided much fodder for late-night comics. They also have reopened a debate we thought was closed some 15 years ago: That is, should 18-year-old adults be permitted to drink alcoholic beverages? Or, put another way, should individual states, rather than the federal government, decide what the drinking age should be?

Until the mid-1980s, the drinking age varied from state to state. In New York and California, it was 21; in New Jersey and Arizona, it was 19. In about half the states, it was 18, and in some places, like Washington, D.C., hard liquor was limited to those 21 and over, while those 18 and over could drink beer and wine.

During the Reagan administration, Secretary of Transportation Elizabeth Dole decided to use the heavy hand of the federal government to coerce states to raise their drinking ages, uniformly, to 21. Since the Constitution forbids a simple federal fiat to impose a national drinking age, Dole came upon a precedent-setting idea: Deny federal highway funds to states that refused to go along with the federal government's wishes. Dangling that carrot worked, and Wyoming became the last state to buckle under in 1988. Subsequent administrations have used the same approach on other issues, but that is a subject for another column and another day.

Attempts to control behavior in this manner are futile. Studies have shown that raising the drinking age has done little to curb alcohol consumption among the under-21 crowd. A survey of Virginia college students at eight different campuses reported that 93 percent of students over 21 said they drank alcoholic beverages; of those under 21, 92 percent said they drank.

Besides being an unwarranted governmental intrusion into the private lives and behavior of adult citizens, these laws run the risk of encouraging furtive, irresponsible behavior. As one student leader said, "If anything, [the higher drinking age has] caused these 18- and 19-year-olds to go out and drink more."

This law was motivated primarily by the belief that a higher drinking age will help reduce drunken-driving accidents and deaths. How valid is this reason? According to two economists who have examined the evidence, not very.

Peter Asch of Rutgers University and David Levy of the Federal Trade Commission noted that though there is reason to believe that raising the drinking age does reduce accidents among the affected group, this does not "constitute persuasive evidence that higher drinking ages make the roads safer." In reality, they reported, "higher drinking ages may simply be moving the problem around, rather than solving it."

The researchers pointed out that it is not young drinkers who tend to cause road accidents; it is inexperienced drinkers, however old. By examining statistics from states that have had different drinking ages -- 18, 19, 20, or 21 -- Asch and Levy concluded that accidents occur at a higher rate during the first year of legal drinking than during subsequent years.

This may affect statistics that show a disproportionate number of injuries and fatalities among teenagers, but no genuine improvement will occur: Only the ages of those involved in traffic accidents will change.

The arguments for returning the drinking age to 18 are well-known. In every state, 18-year-olds have reached the age of majority. They are permitted to vote, to marry, to negotiate contracts, and to do all things responsible adults are permitted to do without the consent of a parent or guardian. They work and pay taxes.

The higher drinking age has placed many colleges in the absurd position of baby-sitting for adults. These institutions must devise ways of enforcing laws that are widely perceived as both unfair and unenforceable. It also makes the job of teaching young people how to drink more responsibly more difficult. A perplexed college official asked: "How does a parent, how does a friend, teach a young person responsible drinking when any drinking at all is illegal?"

A good argument can be made even for lowering the drinking age to precede the driving age (14 and 16, or 15 and 17, or 16 and 18). Permission to drink would then be decided by the family, not the state. Young people should learn to drink responsibly under their parents' supervision without substantial danger of drinking and driving. The "learning curve" for people to find their appropriate level of moderate drinking should begin as early as possible to prevent risky behavior.

There is little point in raising the drinking age if it simply postpones highway accidents and undermines society's ability to teach responsible drinking behavior. These types of restrictions undercut efforts to impart traditional values like responsibility and prudence to young people in all aspects of their lives.

Regardless of whether my arguments here are immediately persuasive, we deserve to have a serious debate about the drinking age. We should not consider it to be a settled question, since it involves issues of federalism, personal autonomy, and basing law on reason rather than emotion. Let the discussion begin.