Would Lowering the Drinking Age Really Cut Down on Alcohol Abuse?

I'm not sure. Presidents of some pretty major colleges, however, say it will. Check out the list of leaders who are pressing legislators to make the legal age 18:

" William Kirwan, chancellor of the University System of Maryland, William Brody, president of Johns Hopkins, C.D. Mote Jr. of the University of Maryland and the presidents of Washington and Lee, Sweet Briar, Towson, Randolph-Macon, Duke, Tufts, Dartmouth and others have signed on to the effort.

Other area school leaders to sign on include those from the College of Notre Dame of Maryland, Goucher College, Hollins University, Hampden-Sydney College, Washington College, Gettysburg College and Dickinson College..."

From The Washington Post

One college town is installing rubber sidewalks because kegs keep cracking the concrete.

I see the point - people, in college or otherwise, are going to drink if they've made up their minds too. And the drinking age being 21 doesn't effect it much one way or the other, especially in the case of college parties/campuses where alcohol is readily available. The illegality of it, to an 18-21 year old, probably gives it more appeal. Sort of like still getting one over on your parents/the whole appeal of doing something you've been told is wrong. Legalizing behavior that is, essentially, already mainstream just makes sense when you get down to it. Though I'm not sure it'll do but so much to effect binge drinking on college campuses. As above, people do what they've made up their mind to do as a general rule.

And, frankly, the good old argument that if you're old enough to be sent off to die in combat you should be allowed to make your own decisions about drinking is not such a bad point. Same goes for the age to vote, have sex, buy cigarettes... all of these decisions are, arguably, more serious than the decision to drink. So if 18 year olds are mature enough to decide all of these things...

Why can't University leaders apply the same logic to marijuanna laws? I mean, really, a better way to stop binge drinking would be to legalize the mellower, less physically, socially and otherwise destructive mainstream substance.

Gateway drug my foot. You're a lot more likely to try harder drugs drunk than stoned.

And a lot less likely to break sidewalks with kegs if you can go down to the corner store and buy all the weed you want. I'd be curious to see the results of a survey showing how many people, of any age, would visit a weed bar rather than an alcohol bar. The numbers in favor of weed would probably be pretty high.

Ha ha