Closing the Tap

The trend is against legal drinking by 18-year-olds

When the Massachusetts house of representatives last week took up Governor Edward King's request to raise the legal drinking age to 21, scores of college students crowded into the gallery. "Atta way, baby!" they shouted when the house watered down the measure. But King lobbied overnight, and the house and senate then overwhelmingly voted to set the age at 19. The two houses are expected to agree soon to move the limit to 21.

Massachusetts thus followed five other states -Iowa, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota and Montana -in deciding that lowering the legal drinking age to 18 had been a mistake. Indeed, one of King's most effective issues during his campaign last year was teen-age drinking. His primary opponent, Incumbent Michael Dukakis, had twice vetoed bills to raise the legal drinking age and promised to do so again, despite polls showing that 74% of the state's voters favored raising the age.

King argued that many teen-agers were abusing alcohol. Since 1972, the number of 16-and 18-year-old drinking drivers involved in fatal accidents had tripled. Youth vandalism in Boston quadrupled in five years, while incidents of disorderly conduct doubled. There was also a marked increase in the amount of drinking in high schools and in the number of teen-agers under 18 found to be supplied with liquor by older friends. Says Bertram Holland, executive secretary-treasurer of the Massachusetts Secondary School Administrators Association: "Alcohol abuse is the No. 1 problem in schools."

Police and school officials believe that raising the drinking age will help deter drinking among youngsters in their early teens. But no one expects the change to solve the teen-age drinking problem. Michigan, for example, raised the limit to 21, but large numbers of teen-agers drive on weekends to Detroit's neighbor, Windsor, Ont. where they can legally drink at 19. Some students and counselors at the University of Michigan feel the state's lower age limit has actually increased drinking because of the unavailability of booze to teen-agers by the single drink. Says Student Tom Wurster, 19: "You buy it. What are you going to do with it? You can't bring it into the dorm. Down it goes."

While most students -as well as owners of bars in college towns -resent the change in the age limit, a few have learned something from it. Says Ann Willis, 20, a student at the University of Michigan: "We used to always have a couple of beers before going anywhere. Now we don't and we're having just as much fun. It was kind of a surprise." qed

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