Americans have an uneasy and contradictory relationship with alcohol—and with how underage drinking laws are enforced. Last week, while Virginia was reeling from another high-profile arrest of a 20-year-old, the Richmond Times-Dispatch published an editorial that urged rethinking the nation’s minimum drinking age of 21. The same day, Mothers Against Drunk Driving sent out a release urging states to toughen their underage laws and be more like Utah, which has 20 laws, including a “use and lose” driver’s license suspension for any alcohol infraction.
Despite its illegality, people under 21 drink, and alcohol has been a factor in multiple stories that brought the national spotlight to UVA this past year. Eighteen-year-old Hannah Graham ended up downtown after reportedly drinking illegally with friends. She walked alone, passing several bars, until she encountered a 32-year-old named Jesse Matthew who allegedly offered her a fatal ride and is now charged with her murder.
Although Jackie’s story of a gang rape in last fall’s Rolling Stone article has been discredited, no one challenged the article’s assertion that fraternities offer the forbidden fruit to vulnerable first-year girls who want to drink.
And then there was the violent arrest of Martese Johnson by Virginia Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control agents, eager to bust college students wanting a beer on St. Patrick’s Day. That followed the 2013 arrest of Elizabeth Daly, 20, when agents suspected the sparkling water she’d just bought at Harris Teeter was illegally purchased beer. They pounded on the windows of her car with flashlights, and one pulled a gun, prompting Daly to flee the scene, and resulting in three felony charges against her, which were later dropped. Daly sued the ABC and received a $212,500 settlement.
At the University of Virginia, students petitioned Governor Terry McAuliffe and the General Assembly to take away law enforcement powers from the ABC following Johnson’s arrest. And sparked by the Rolling Stone article, campus sexual assault and its reporting were a major issue in the General Assembly session this year.
Yet no groundswell to reevaluate the drinking age has arisen since 2008, when the Amethyst Initiative, a coalition of college presidents, said the 21 drinking age doesn’t work and caused a disrespect for the law, among other problems.
Proponents of the law say it’s saved lives by reducing the number of drunk driving fatalities, while opponents say it’s caused other harm with increased binge drinking, which the Centers for Disease Control call a major public health problem, and increased sexual assault.
Two presidents at UVA are questioning the current drinking age. New Student Council president Abraham Axler said he’s ready to organize a movement and wants the University to host a national conference on the drinking age with experts weighing in. And former UVA president John Casteen said he’s ready to give money to an organization led by smart, strategic young people willing to take the complicated steps necessary to make change.