I first heard the word "neo-prohibition" used in casual conversation about 10 years ago while on my first date with an attractive, self-assured court reporter who had attracted my attention during a routine deposition. The fact that she enjoyed a good joke and an occasional beer added to her cachet.
Our get-acquainted conversation about assorted stuff and nonsense on our way to Philadelphia revealed that we had much in common. A farm girl, she was of a conservative mind, being especially passionate about personal autonomy tethered to personal responsibility. She labeled the then-burgeoning push to curb underage drinking faddish neo-prohibition, predicting that it would fail because it took no account of human nature and what it meant to be young. She was right.
Since then, a plethora of laws, regulations and zero-tolerance policies administered by cowed and clueless bureaucrats spurred by a need to cover their butts and appease an army of latter-day prohibitionists, politicians and opportunists have dictated compulsory abstinence for young adults under age 21.
No responsible adult would encourage binge drinking among young people, but these overwrought efforts to protect them from demon rum has accomplished little except to ensure that they remain forever children in a hermetically sealed world insulated from real life.
In a new study the National Institutes of Health discovered that college students drink a lot. Is it any wonder? Harsh laws and draconian penalties have driven teen-agers away from the watchful eyes of parents and responsible adults and toward other drugs, while adding the allure of forbidden fruit to alcohol's timeless allure.
Parents who wish to teach responsible drinking are stigmatized or prosecuted and cultural differences discounted or ignored. The combination of pent-up demand, the first exhilarating taste of freedom and prolonged adolescence readily accounts for so-called college binge drinking.
The spirit of puritanism coupled with a low grade anti-capitalist fever flourishes in America, particularly around guilty pleasures like drinking, smoking, SUVs and businesses profiting therefrom. Recently Columba University's National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse erroneously reported that "underage" drinkers between the ages of 12 and 20 consumed 25 percent of all alcoholic beverages ingested in the United States before reluctantly acknowledging that the true figure is closer to 11 percent.
Most of the "underage" drinking in America is actually done by young adults between the ages of 18 and 21, technically underage, but old enough to vote and serve in the military.
The NIH study proposes harsher enforcement and restricted access, but The Wall Street Journal notes that the study doesn't suggest the most sensible approach: make collegiate drinking safe and legal by lowering the age to 19. Binge drinking became a "problem" in 1986 when the federal government forced states to raise the drinking age to 21.
When young adults are treated like hothouse flowers, with alcohol completely off-limits to anyone under 21, it's little wonder they have trouble learning to drink responsibly.
Winston Churchill proclaimed his "rule of life prescribes as an absolutely sacred rite smoking cigars and also the drinking of alcohol before, after and if need be during all meals and the intervals between them."
In his will John Harvard, founder of Harvard University, bequeathed "one half of my worldly goods" to the establishment of a college of brewing science, "confident that it will aid in the establishment of a better regulated and nobler commonwealth than has hitherto blessed this earth."
Recent research by University of Calgary economist Christopher Auld indicates that light drinkers and teetotalers earn about 10 percent less than heavy and moderate drinkers. While warning against drawing any premature conclusions, Auld stresses that the "alcohol-income puzzle" has been "well known among economists for a decade."
Lawmakers and educators should stop treating young adults like children and, like Churchill and Harvard, acknowledge the social and health benefits of responsible, moderate drinking. Nations that teach children moderation over abstinence, such as France, Spain and Italy, may have higher overall rates of alcohol consumption, but far lower rates of alcoholism and alcohol-related diseases.
Truth, reason and common sense, not hyperbole, harsher laws and tighter screws, are the antidotes for binge drinking. Here's a scary thought. In light of the current anti-alcohol fervor on America's college campuses, would either Churchill or Harvard survive a semester?
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