Alcoholics Anonymous Reviews

School of Education dean a noted researcher on college alcohol and drug abuse

The call to consider reducing the legal drinking age from 21 to 18 could spur some valuable discussion, but alone won't solve the college student alcohol problem, according to University Dean of the IU School of Education Gerardo Gonzalez, an internationally recognized expert on alcohol and drug education. More than 100 college and university chancellors and presidents have signed a public statement stating that the current legal drinking age of 21 hasn't worked.

"I think that what we're seeing in this letter is a level of frustration that college presidents feel about the problem of drinking on campus," Gonzalez said.

The higher education leaders are part of the Amethyst Initiative, an organization started last month (July 2008). On the organization's Web site, a welcome message reads that the current drinking age "has created a culture of dangerous binge drinking" on college campuses. While not specifically recommending lowering the drinking age, the organization "supports informed and unimpeded debate on the 21-year-old drinking age."

Gonzalez founded the BACCHUS Network (BACCHUS stands for "Boost Alcohol Consciousness Concerning the Health of University Students") at the University of Florida in 1975. It has grown to be the largest collegiate organization focused on preventing alcohol abuse, with more than 32,000 student leaders and advisers working with peers on more than 900 campuses worldwide. Gonzalez continues to serve on the BACCHUS board of trustees and consults with other organizations on issues surrounding campus alcohol abuse.

Gonzalez said he understands the desire for administrators to speak more candidly with students about alcohol abuse. Some campuses struggle with addressing students not of drinking age about the issues of alcohol.

"There's no evidence that reducing the drinking age would make it better," Gonzalez said. "It might make it easier for the colleges to be able to take a consistent approach to the population. But what we have on college campuses is a culture of drinking that leads to the very high level of binge drinking and related problems that we see. So no single approach or policy is going to impact that at the level that it needs to be impacted. It's going to require a comprehensive and sustained effort."

Gonzalez said that there is some research evidence suggesting such a change would have little impact on college students. He said that when a 1984 law required states to make the legal drinking age 21 or lose federal highway money, alcohol consumption and alcohol-related traffic crashes dropped for the 18 to 21 age group as a whole. But for college students, no relationship was found between minimum legal drinking age and either consumption levels or crashes.

The call for a change is also couched in an assumption, Gonzalez said, that drinking would be more open and thus more monitored. "Rather than trying to hide or do it behind closed doors, they might go to bars, go to places where there is more environmental control of the circumstances," he said. "Again, there is no research evidence to suggest that in fact that would happen."

The biggest impact of the presidents' initiative could be a frank discussion of the issues of college student alcohol abuse, Gonzalez said. "And to the extent that the presidents' initiative leads to a dialogue about what should the institutions do and what should be the presidents' role in promoting and advancing effective approaches, I think it is a healthy development. But the assumption that it could all hinge on a change in the drinking age law is not now supported by the research evidence."

IU News Room