McCardell, who submitted an op-ed to The New York Times in the fall arguing that the current legal drinking was "bad social policy and terrible law," said Tuesday that lowering the drinking age would force people to address the issues of responsibility around alcohol and to change the American cultural perception that alcohol is a categorically subversive influence. McCardell, now a history professor at Middlebury, identified the two polarized forces that have always been at odds with each other throughout American history, culminating in moments of temperance.
"I think we're living through a similar moment now where alcohol is identified as a corrupting evil, and there exists an assumption that we can root it out," he said. "We have to relearn the lesson [that] the harder you push, you may wind up making the situation worse."
He cited the prohibition era as an example, saying it "bred an excitement about evading the law."
McCardell even reached back 200 years for support, to a time when alcohol was not seen as a pervading "evil force" in American society.
"Johnny Appleseed went around planting apples because there was such a great demand for hard cider," he said.
In addition to lowering the drinking age, McCardell's organization, "Choose Responsibility," pushes for a licensing program. The program would be comparable to that of a driver's education course, used to teach young adults about responsible possession and consumption of alcohol. Once students successfully finished the alcohol safety course at the minimum age of 18, they would receive a license that would allow them to enjoy all the benefits that a 21-year-old does today.
College President James Wright has expressed support for this movement.
"I think the assumption seems to be that students are immature, but there are plenty of of immature people into their 20s, 30s and 40s. I see no reason to single [students] out," Wright said.
Scott Guenther, a recent Middlebury graduate and Choose Responsibility assistant to the director, attended Tuesday's discussion. He contrasted the alcohol policy in the United States to that of Canada, France and other European countries where alcohol is regarded as a food group rather than an intoxicant.
Guenther said that in Canada, where the legal drinking age in some provinces is 18, students drank more frequently than students in the United States, but consumed a much smaller quantity.
Grace Kronenberg, another Middlebury graduate and a Choose Responsibility adviser, said that a drinking age of 18 allows one's family to play a role in teaching drinking responsibility, as opposed to a drinking age of 21, when students are generally living away from their homes.
"[The American] law that says [at age 18] you can serve in the military, your parents can't see your medical records without your consent, but says you can't buy a beer, is inconsistent," McCardell said.
McCardell also does not believe that enforcement of the current law is a solution. According to Choose Responsibility's research, only two of every 1,000 underage drinkers are prosecuted. McCardell pointed out that even efforts to double enforcement would only bring the prosecution rate up to four out of every 1,000 offenders.
"If a law is being broken on a day to day basis then is it really a law?" said Ruslan Tovbulatov '09, summer president elect of Chi Gamma Epsilon fraternity.
The organization's principal opponent, McCardell said, is Mothers Against Drunk Driving, a lobbying group whose stories of losing loved ones to alcohol-related tragedies evoke emotion.
"However, one thing we did agree on was that the situation as it exists today isn't working," he said.
Although states are given the prerogative to set their own drinking ages, many federal grants are contingent upon states following the 21-age law; states can face a 10 percent reduction in federal highway funds. Choose Responsibility, which aims to tackle the laws at the state-level, hopes to launch a five-year pilot program to receive a congressional waiver that won't jeopardize federal funds.
The idea to lower the drinking age to 18 was proposed unsuccessfully in 1990 by Roderic Park, then chancellor of the University of Colorado at Boulder, which Choose Responsibility visited as part of their campaign.
Choose Responsibility plans to raise awareness on college campuses and professional organizations such as the bartending training program TIPs. In light of the impending presidential elections, McCardell hopes that several candidates may even take up the issue.
"We're not claiming that our proposal will make things perfect, we just think it'll make things less imperfect than they are now."
