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Sports blog: Warrior Nation

By LAUREN MYLO

lmylo@wiltonvillager.com


WILTON -- Europeans have less of a problem with alcohol. Young people today have a less responsible lifestyle overall. Lowering the drinking age to 18 will give high school students more access to alcohol.

These were some of the arguments supported and refuted during a lively discussion from four panelists at a Wilton Library forum on Thursday entitled: "Re-thinking the Drinking Age: Is 21 Working? Is 18 the Answer?"

The talk was hosted by the Wilton Library and the League of Women Voters, and the topic was put to the test by an author, a college administrator, a family psychologist and a professor -- two who promoted lowering the drinking age and two who did not.

Barrett Seaman, author of "Binge: Campus Life in an Age of Disconnection and Excess" said while staying in college dorms doing research for his book, he found students drink as heavily as they did when he attended college decades ago, but "alcohol had become much more clandestine."

He's also on the board of directors of Choose Responsibility, a nonprofit organization that supports "a series of changes that will allow 18 to 20 year-old adults to purchase, possess and consume alcoholic beverages," according to its Web site.

Choose Responsibility launched the Amethyst Initiative, which has been signed by 130 colleges and universities and encourages debate among schools' leaders on the drinking age.

"I firmly believe it's not about a lower drinking age but addressing a changing culture that has revolved around alcohol," said Seaman.

Linda Degutis, Ph.D., associate professor at Yale University Medical School and immediate past president of the American Public Health Association, said she became interested in the topic when she worked in the ER with trauma patients and noticed an increase of young people with alcohol related incidents.

She said lowering the drinking age won't get to the root of the problem, the real issue is discovering the cause.

"One issue is that there's a reason why this is happening, and maybe it's some reasons that are totally unrelated to age," she said.

Degutis disputed the theory that Europeans, who are brought up around alcohol and enjoy drinks with their families at younger ages than most American children, drink more responsibly, citing a 2007 survey by Mothers Against Drunk Driving that states "the percentage of 15 to 16-year-old students in most European countries who report drinking to intoxication is higher than in the U.S."

She also noted that studies have shown college-aged students who don't attend college drink less than college-aged students who do.

Although Lee Peters, vice president of students affairs at the University of Hartford, is a supporter of the Amethyst Initiative, he made a comment that was agreed upon generally by the panel.

"If we can deal with it behaviorally, we'll have a lot more success than arbitrarily changing the age," said Peters.

John Hamilton, CEO, Regional Networks of Programs, Inc., a nonprofit social service agency specializing in the prevention and treatment of substance abuse, gave his input from the medical field's perspective and noted that Fairfield County's rates of binge drinking in high school is 20 percent higher than the rest of the country.

"11.7 is the average drinking age," he said. "A lot of you (in the audience) are saying, 'what's the problem? I drank in high school.' But did you drink in middle school?"

Hamilton encouraged parents to talk honestly and non-judgmentally with their children, noting that stress is a main factor in what motivates children to drink illegally.

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