The Political Science Symposium hosted its annual debate Thursday night at the Hughes-Trigg Theater. Barrett Seaman and Debbie Meripolski faced off in public discord regarding the drinking age and moving it back to 18.
Barrett Seaman, a former editor for Time magazine and author of the book “Binge: Campus Life in an Age of Disconnection and Excess,” took the argument that the age should indeed be moved from 21 to 18. His opponent, Debbie Meripolski, an executive director of the Greater Dallas Council on Alcohol and Drug Abuse, took the contra-argument and made claims for the legal drinking age to remain at 21.
The format of the debate was a 15-minute statement period for the debaters to state their cases and then a five-minute rebuttal period for each speaker. Through a coin toss, Meripolski was selected to make the first argument.
She began by citing the history of the drinking age becoming 21 and the problems along the way. In the process of making a unified law, many states set their own drinking ages, according to Meripolski. This set the stage for people under age to travel to obtain their alcohol.
“This created what has been known as ‘blood borders,'” Meripolski said. “The youths would travel across state borders to obtain alcohol and in some cases die in traffic accidents on the way back across the border after drinking, coining the name ‘blood borders.'”
This was a problem until 1984 when President Ronald Reagan committed to a national drinking age of 21. Meripolski cited statistics such as 900 lives have been saved per year for a total of 17,000 lives saved from alcohol-related deaths since the laws inception.
“It has been heralded as one of the most effective public safety laws ever passed,” Meripolski said.
Meripolski moved on to the main premise of her argument, stating that drinking at a young age can affect a still developing brain and lead to problems later in life.
“The longer a youth delays alcohol use, the less likely he or she is to have problems with alcohol later in life,” Meripolski said.
During his turn to make an argument, Seaman began by citing his experiences with studying college students for his book on binge drinking. He explained that many of the problems with binge drinking arise from the notion that underage drinkers must “pregame” in order to be assured a drink that night, often leading to over-indulgence.
Seaman believes that enforcement on college campuses is a joke, and that a simple solution would be to move the age to 18 and shift focus to education rather than enforcement.
“Use the resources that we currently, and, mind you, futilely, spend on enforcement to develop meaningful alcohol education programs, to bring parents and other mentoring adults back into the equation,” Seaman said.
Seaman argued that the age of 18 is legally binding and defining of adulthood in the United States and so the drinking age should be as well.
“An 18-year-old adult can vote, have her privacy protected, enter into binding legal contracts, marry, take out a loan, adopt a child and serve in the military – to exclude one activity reserved for for adults, is to invite unwarranted and distorted activity to that behavior,” Seaman said.
Upon the conclusions of the argument, both stressed that they were both in complete agreement that no matter the age, education is key to drinkers of any age.
