Breaking Taboo

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Executive Summary

By tracing the history of both alcohol use and legal controls in the United States, "Breaking Taboo," draws striking parallels between contemporary alcohol policy and antiquated—and commonly regarded as failed—attempts at controlling problematic alcohol use. Breaking Taboo examines the current clandestine and increasingly high risk drinking practices of young Americans, where/how/why young people drink and learn to drink, and how our policies have exacerbated the problems they have been designed to solve. Sharing conceptual similarities to successful graduated driver's license programs, Breaking Taboo proposes a new set of more comprehensive and effective graduated alcohol policies and drunk driving laws for the U.S.

Requests/Publishing

Please feel free to contact me for copies of Breaking Taboo using the contact form. Publishers please also feel free to utilize the contact form for more information about my project.

Table of Contents

Take a sneak peak at the Preface and Introduction

Preface For a curious legal mind, growing up under the 21 year-old drinking age has proved an interesting piece of American culture and tradition. I was always interested in the total blatant disregard for this prohibition among youth in this country. Even stranger is the culture throughout the country where everyone seems to be well aware that the drinking age is widely ignored. When I applied for my first bartending job, which I did the summer that I began writing this, a joke was made regarding the knowledge of operating a keg. It was assumed that because I was a college student (even though under 21 at the time) that I needn’t be shown how to do that on my first day. Personally, I have never felt an ounce of guilt for drinking before the age of 21. To be clear, at times, I have worried about the legal consequences, but that is an entirely different issue. But I consider myself a law-abiding citizen. As do my parents, who, illegally it turns out, taught me about responsible alcohol use from a young age. For most of my high school years, I didn’t drink, especially in social situations. My first drink was with my parents, and the majority of my consumption in my pre-college years was with family. I remember carrying a water bottle to high school parties so I wouldn’t feel awkward literally not having something to drink. I didn’t want to feel pressured into drinking at parties when I was perfectly happy being sober and just observing everything that was happening around me. Considering the severe consequences of driving after drinking any alcohol before turning 21, and that I was generally the self-appointed designated driver, alcohol just didn’t play as major a role in my high schools years as it does for many young people. When I got accepted to Hampshire, a school that, well, isn’t known for low rates of drug and alcohol use, I applied for substance-free housing, as my preconception about people who drank alcohol or did drugs was largely formed around negative stereotypes that developed throughout high school. Shortly after getting to Hampshire, I realized I had over-reacted. My second semester, I moved off the substance free hall to one without that specific designation. Although the move was because of an irresolvable dispute between me and my neighbor regarding my music volume, living with a variety of students, some who used alcohol and/or drugs and some who did not, was an eye-opening learning experience to say the least. I soon realized I had been seriously mistaken about what alcohol use implied. I assumed that people who drank in college “got wasted” all the time, and that their heavy and frequent alcohol use got in the way of schoolwork, healthy social activities, and just health in general. But again, I soon realized that alcohol could be a part of my life as long as I was responsible and smart about my choices. Although Hampshire has a higher rate of alcohol consumption than many campuses, its rates of violence, alcohol abuse and alcohol-related injuries are lower; a statistic I think points to the acceptance of alcohol consumption as an activity on campus, and the proceeding emphasis being placed on responsibility. However, in all of the countless nights of having a beer with dinner, a couple drinks between friends, enjoying some sipping whisky during a late-night research paper or whatever the circumstances were, we were breaking the law. At any moment, we could technically be arrested. As a legal mind, the dichotomy between the total illegality of drinking and total indifference by people towards the drinking age struck me as odd, but interesting. As I grew intellectually and socially I came to believe and understand that we were actually doing nothing wrong. Yes, we were under 21. Yes, we consumed alcohol. But did we allow egregious behavior when intoxicated? No. Did we get behind the wheel of a car after drinking? No. Did this social/recreational use of alcohol get in the way of our lives or impact us negatively in any way? Absolutely not. I realized something that some people seem to try very hard at keeping under wraps: Alcohol is not inherently problematic. It certainly can be, and trust me, I have seen and heard more than enough horrifying instances throughout my college years of people vomiting (often on a regular basis, sometimes that being the mark of a “good night out”), losing consciousness, needing emergency medical attention, engaging in sexual encounters unsafely (sometimes not even remembering the encounter the next morning), hurting themselves or others, whether physically or emotionally, driving drunk or otherwise having serious problems. But those people who have or cause those problems are in the minority, especially at Hampshire. I always felt as though there was something strange going on with alcohol: How could so many people be totally in control of themselves when they drink and some people lose control so easily? No doubt about it, alcohol culture fascinates me, and has for a while. Combined with my interest in law, public policy and public health, I decided to use my anecdotal experiences, perceptions, perspectives and ideas as a launching pad onto a comprehensive, intensely research based large-scale writing project. I wanted to get to the bottom of what my experiences led me to suspect. In that light, I have spent over 10 months researching, conducting interviews, speaking with national experts, working as a bartender, writing, re-writing, and most importantly, being a curious and perceptive person under 21 for the first half of the time spent on this text, and over 21 for the second half of the time spent on this. I hope that my unique experience, having grown up as part of the underground culture of the drinking age in the United States, will lend a perspective that currently is lacking, if existing at all, in the public policy discourse around alcohol policy. Introduction He was technically dead for almost a minute before he began breathing again. Officer Mitchell was nearing the end of his routine patrol of the Massachusetts College of Liberal Art’s campus as he noticed three young men dragging a similarly aged student from a car parked on the side of the road. As the young man was being pulled out of his car, his head hit the ground. The three friends were clearly intoxicated as was the young man they were trying to help. Officer Mitchell jumped out of his cruiser to assess the situation – to see if everyone was all right and if anyone needed help. After realizing that the individual wasn’t breathing, Officer Mitchell immediately began CPR, over the protests of the three friends. The four students had been drinking heavily together earlier in the night and the impact just seconds earlier had knocked the one student unconscious and stopped his breathing. The three friends were trying to get him to safety to let him “sleep it off,” a common underground and potentially fatal “treatment” for what often turns out to be alcohol poisoning. Allowed to sleep, many people who have had that much to drink slip into a coma and never wake up. Clearly the three friends were genuinely trying to help the young man out. Why, then, when Officer Mitchell was administering CPR did they repeatedly try to push the officer off and pull their friend away? Why would three people who knew they needed medical attention for a friend try to push away a trained medical professional? After the ambulance arrived and the student was rushed to the emergency room, Officer Mitchell spoke to the three remaining friends about what took place throughout the night, at that point discovering that they all had been drinking heavily earlier. At a certain point he plainly asked the students why in the world would they try to pull their friend away when the officer was trying to help him, efforts that turned out to save the young man’s life. The three answered simply, “We didn’t know what was going to happen, we didn’t want our friend to get in trouble.” Evidently, they were all under the age of 21, the federally mandated, though state legislated, drinking age in the United States. This policy was created in the name of safety and health, to stop young people who were deemed not mature enough to handle alcohol from using and abusing it. But is a policy really safe when a 20 year-old is more concerned about not getting in trouble with the law than seeking medical attention that could save the life of a friend? Are we, as a society, putting rhetoric and ‘politics’ before safety and health? I will show that the problem of high risk drinking and alcohol abuse in American culture, especially among young people, is not the cause for prohibitive legislation but rather has been in fact created by it, and that to create a culture in the United States where alcohol is not taboo, and the culture isn’t underground, we need to rethink how we look at alcohol policy and the problems it should be designed to address. As a country, do we really think that people under the age of 21 don’t consume alcohol? If we do, we are wrong: The NIAAA found that in 2002, 20% of 8th graders, generally aged 14 years or younger, had consumed alcohol in just the 30 days previous to the survey. The number of 16 year olds who have used alcohol jumps to 61% and the number of high school seniors, generally 18 years old, rises again, to 80%. Yet legally, our society is organized around the assumption that before turning 21, young people won’t drink. So why, then, bother teaching them about the difference between responsible use and dangerous abuse? What this outlook ends up creating is an underground culture that, for starters, fosters high risk drinking at a young age because there are no responsible figures to learn from. This is a culture where excessive drinking is not looked down upon or seen as dangerous, but rather acceptable and encouraged. In our society, we pass information down chiefly through parents, schools, peers and media. But when parents and schools are taken out of the equation because their hands are tied by the drinking age, and media have no vested interest in producing a responsible drinking culture, we are left only with peers to teach other peers. Do we accept this method of information transition in other realms of life? Certainly not. Driving, for example, is similar to alcohol in the way that it can be both used responsibly and irresponsibly. Would we let 16 year-olds teach other 16 year-olds how to drive? Would we create a high “driving age” and simply allow people to drive once they become of age, having not provided any prior education? You would be hard pressed to find a parent comfortable with that method of teaching. Instead, in states that have graduated drivers license policies, which have been shown to be more effective in reducing teenage accidents than non-graduated programs, we first allow the family to teach their child (learner’s permit) then provide state mandated structures to encourage responsibility (provisional license) before giving teens the full privilege (full license). Those effective policies are on the opposite end of the spectrum from the culture around alcohol policy, which is completely underground and based on ignoring the realities of the situation. This is a “don’t ask, don’t tell” culture that sets the stage for tragedies, not all of which are averted as the one mentioned before was. A culture where, in the eyes of the law, no one under 21 drinks, but in real life for the millions of Americans who drink before turning 21, a legal system designed to sweep their problems under the carpet, to be dealt with by themselves. This drive underground is a product of a mainstream culture where alcohol is a cultural taboo for people under 21. By the time you are finished with this book, you’ll see how the sentiments, largely based in puritan ideals that drove the temperance movement that led to prohibition, are still alive and well in today’s policy and culture, and are turning America’s youth to dangerous alcohol habits. Currently, even though it is commonly known that the 21 year-old drinking age is not generally followed, alcohol is a taboo subject in most schools, many households and in our mainstream society, especially for those under 21. Scenes involving alcohol use are often banned from TV, and movies that contain alcohol use are generally up rated for older audiences citing alcohol/drug use as a reason. Alcohol companies are forced to advertise against “underage drinking” even though they derive a large piece of their profits, around $25 billion a year,[1] from consumption by people under 21. Many American bars, pubs and nightclubs ban either people under 18 or 21 from even entering the premises, a stark contrast to many European countries where young people are more often allowed in venues that serve alcohol and can then utilize them as a family and social space. Because alcohol is so taboo, the underground culture takes shape as a totally autonomous and dangerous culture for those involved in it, which is literally anyone who consumes any alcohol and is under 21. It is so difficult for someone young to find a place to drink alcohol where there is no risk of getting caught, that when the opportunity arises, binge drinking tends to ensue because of the uncertainty of when the next opportunity will present itself. When young people do acquire alcohol, they tend to buy large amounts, and end up drinking it in one sitting. Instead of children drinking at home, with parents or some other mature authority figure present to keep some order or be available in an emergency, youth seek the most deserted, un-supervised areas where drinking can happen without getting caught. And the more alcohol is “cracked down on” the more underground that drives the consumption. The first thought in these kids’ minds is not to be safe; rather, it is to not get caught, and who can blame them? Getting arrested for violating these laws can be a permanent scar on someone’s criminal record. It is that same culture that contributes to the deaths of many young people across the country who, instead of seeking medical attention, opt instead for a route that has no immediate legal consequences. Our counter-productive prohibitive 21 year-old drinking age creates this atmosphere and culture. Fortunately, as we’ll soon examine, there are ways that certain communities that work around this to create environments where responsible alcohol use is encouraged rather than ignored. College campuses have the ability, and often do, exercise a significant amount of discretion over what laws they choose to enforce, often opting to ensure student safety before enforcing law. Similarly, many families decide to take the proactive approach to alcohol education and teach their children responsible use at a younger age than 21. The United States has the highest drinking age in the world, and one of the highest rates of alcohol abuse, especially amongst young people, so we’ll also look at what countries and cultures with different alcohol policies have experienced, and whether we can learn from their successes or failings. The problems that face us now, though daunting, are not particularly new. For thousands of years human civilization has grappled with the ambiguity of alcohol. And since this country’s founding, we have done the same. Much of what permeates our culture today regarding alcohol use is rife with this ambiguity, but more notably - hypocrisy. In 2007, over 80% of college students had consumed alcohol in the past year. Yet most policy still presumes that people under 21 do not drink. Do colleges that have dry campuses really think they are exempt from that 80%? The same way that prohibition made illegal all alcohol consumption for the entire population, our 21 year-old drinking age does the same for a significant subset of the population now. Prohibition, which was officially enacted by a constitutional amendment and repealed the same way, is commonly known as one of the biggest legislative mistakes of the past 100 years. Prohibition did not stop problem drinking. Rather, it pushed the manufacture, distribution and consumption far underground. The policy of prohibition itself created such a criminality in the common citizen that in 1932, when speaking about what is needed to expunge the nation of the problems that prohibition created, John D. Rockefeller said that “the first objective is the abolition of lawlessness.” Largely led by puritan ideals, prohibition cemented America’s tendency towards binge drinking, and the ramifications contained therein. Is it really so different now? I will argue that much of the problems we face today are problems that have been created by poor policy that are not particularly different than failed policy in the past, prohibition being the most notable example. Looking at the temperance movement and the push for national prohibition, while keeping a modern perspective, such as considering the parts of the country that are still dry, and vestigial prohibition-era policies that are still in place, we will gain valuable insight into the historical context for the problems that face us now and how best to address them. One of the foremost reasons why alcohol policy in this country is so ineffective is the culture surrounding it. Alcohol is taboo for people under 21. We need to throw that idea out the window and start over. The problem is not “underage drinking.” That really is not even a problem, but really a myth. To be clear, I’m not arguing that people who are “underage” don’t drink but rather that the crime of “underage drinking” is artificial. Underage drinking is only a problem because proponents of the 21 year-old drinking age have decided it is. It’s easy to talk about it, and it’s easy to classify. However, the problem is not that 18 year-olds are consuming alcohol. The problem is that 18 year-olds are showing a greater propensity to binge drink than they did 20 years ago. To solve the problem of alcohol abuse, we will need to forget about “underage” drinking and instead focus on eliminating abusive and irresponsible drinking. Part of the reason why our drinking age has remained in place is the way that it has been politically framed in our national discourse. For example, an irrational fear has been created around the prospect that drinking alcohol at a young age severely damages the teenage brain, an assertion, as we will see, that is not based in any medical evidence at all. This fear is used to advance the idea that underage drinking is inherently problematic, regardless of how moderate the drinking may be. As a nation, we have been led to believe that underage drinking is by itself dangerous: that it leads to drunk driving, that it impairs brain development, that it leads to problems later on in life. We will uncover the truths, histories and methodologies behind some of the most common beliefs about alcohol and drinking age. We have been told countless times by organizations like Mothers Against Drunk Driving that the drinking has saved 900 lives per year. We will see how they have come to that conclusion, and examine the inconsistencies in the way that 21-year proponents misuse statistics in support of their political platform. As a nation, we are allowing political correctness to motivate our policy. Alcohol in and of itself is not necessarily a problem. It certainly can be, but it need not be. There are millions of Americans under and over 21 that enjoy alcohol in moderation and responsibly. That alone should remind us that idea that we’ve been lead to believe of everyone who drinks before they are 21 being automatically irresponsible cannot be true. It is a mistake to categorize all use for someone who happens to be under 21 into the “irresponsible” category. The 21 year-old age limit is totally arbitrary. To affirm that the 21 year-old drinking age is correct would be concluding that every other country in the world that doesn’t have such a high drinking age is wrong, and that 21 is indeed the magical age where alcohol responsibility comes naturally. We are treating youth alcohol consumption like a leaking pipe. By plugging the leak, i.e. creating the drinking age, we are expecting the problem to have been completely solved. However, in reality, all we have done is diverted water pressure elsewhere, moving any potential problems that might exist to where we can’t see them. We will explore how our current policy is driving young Americans into poor alcohol habits, and how the media and therefore our culture around alcohol use only perpetuates these short-sighted and poorly constructed policies. What we need is a new outlook on alcohol: One that is not based off of false assumptions. Politicians like to talk about being tough on crime, but what that really means is that by simply creating harsher and stricter policies and punishments they can consider themselves as taking on challenges. However, the real challenge with alcohol abuse among young America is taking the more thoughtful, scientific and comprehensive approach. A 21 year-old drinking age means nothing if it actually encourages irresponsible alcohol abuse among the group of people it is meant to protect. The legislation doesn’t matter in of itself. What matters is how people will react to it. We have decades of evidence confirming that prohibitive policies simply do not work. By creating policies that reflect young people’s development we can successfully create a culture where alcohol abuse is looked down upon and responsible alcohol use is encouraged. One of the interesting things we can examine is how little role the law plays in people’s choice about drinking. Rather social pressures, either from peers or families, end up influencing young people to a far greater extent. Do we want police on every street corner making sure people don’t drink and drive or are causing disturbances because of heavy alcohol use? Instead, let’s examine whether we can create a culture that polices itself. A culture where alcohol abuse is not accepted at parties, bars and social gathering. A culture where drunk driving is not tolerated. A culture change doesn’t happen overnight. I’m not advocating a miracle cure for our country’s alcohol problems because there is none. The idea is to stop looking at the ground right in front of us and creating policies based on intimidation, fear and arrests and fines. Instead, let’s look at the distance – What can we accomplish in the next five, ten, twenty years? How do we pull the emergency brake on rising alcohol abuse and turn our culture around? What policies can we create that decades from now, people will look back on with admiration and thanks for ignoring politics and rhetoric and focusing on the problems at hand?

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