The Hangover

It is difficult to believe it has been en entire semester, but two weeks from Friday will mark the last day of classes for fall semester. The semester has simultaneously drug on and flew by all all at once. That being said, it is about that time to wrap everything up here at the Hangover.

I am definitely moved through my topic and took it further than I would have ever anticipated doing when I first created the Hangover. I discovered many interesting aspects about underage drinking, the MLDA, and the controversy surrounding the issue, and I hope this blog has brought that to everyone’s attention. Who knew that a college student could enjoy one’s self in discussing ways to avoid drinking? Go figure.

As much as I am looking forward to laying on my couch and watching Elf consecutively until Christmas during winter break, this semester of writing has been challenging yet rewarding, and I hope all my reader’s found this blog to be informative and aid in the understanding of issues surrounding underage drinking.

Cheers!

After reviewing my past blog entires, I realized that I have maintained a rather objecive position when composing my posts. I have offered my own personal opinion very little in my past writing. That being said, I wanted to offer my personal view on the subject that I have discussing over the past few weeks.

When I first began this issue in the beginning of the semester, I had a different objective and approach to the issue at hand which I suppose is to be expected. I approached the issue with the idea that I would inform my audience on the issue without really choosing a pacticular side. However, as I began to trudge through the issue I realized it wouldn’t be quite that simple.

I found the issue of the minimum legal drinking age was more than a matter of just 18 or 21. I discovered a whole slew of factors that contributed to drinking behaviors and a plethora of statistics I had to comb through regarding the issue. Environmental, individual, social and physiological issues all contributed to drinking outside of what age the MLDA is set at.

After all of that, I have discovered that the social framework that we have built around drinking is what needs to change not the age. I have discussed it in earlier posts, but we have created almost an expectation that students should drink once the enter college. Through popular culture and peers, there is this pressure on students that makes them feel as though they should drink in order to fit in on a college campus.

I think that it is important for students to understand that this type of behavior isn’t the kind that most college students engage in.  In order to see a change in drinking behaviors I think that it is crucial to restructure the framework we have created in order to have any effect over drinking habits. Furthermore, the restructuring must start with students within the college age bracket, not with authoritative figures and college leaders. Once our generation begins to understand we aren’t drinking as much as we all think we do then in theory heavy drinking among college students would decrease.

Additionally, I feel that stress and academic burden plays a huge role into how much students drink. I have heard many students and close friends say how much they wanted to “get wasted” or “blackout” after a long week of tests and papers. Being a college student myself with a heavy course load, I can understand where the feeling comes from. The stakes for college students are much higher for college. The courses are more difficult, the GPA has to be higher, and the competition is cut throat. The pressure often leads students to turn to alcohol to relieve stress. A few beers to blow off the week sprials into a night of binge drinking. If we all found more constructive and less dangerous methods to dealing with stress and how academia is affecting us, drinking would also decrease as well.

I think it is easy for college and university presidents to simply advocate a change in age to then to address alcohol issues with their students. It is simpler to madate a law than reconstruct the views of society, but that is the reality of the situation. It’s nto abotu changing ages, but changing minds.

Being that it is Halloween, and I know that Oakland will be crawling with drunk students dressed like various animals, monsters, and probably Sarah Palin. However, this got to me to wondering why we feel the need to get intoxicated on holidays? When one sits down and thinks about each holiday that is celebrated in the course of a year, alcohol is consumed during many of those celebrations; during Christmas we drinking eggnog, New Years Eve champagne, green beer on St. Patrick’s Day. Often times for college students, even Arbor Day is a reason to throw a party.

In thinking about this it brought be back to the social construction of drinking behaviors in society. It is clear that over time we have reaffirmed that getting intoxicated on holidays is acceptable. Actually, we have reaffirmed that getting ridiculously blackout intoxicated at holidays is acceptable. This makes me believe even more than age truly isn’t the issue at hand here. I know that drinking responsibly has been preached for a long time, but the reality is that no one has really enforced this. If we truly wanted to decrease alcohol related deaths and accidents, we would be more proactive in facilitating sensible drinking. Bars wouldn’t have holiday specials, happy hours, and ladies’ nights. We wouldn’t pour another glass of eggnog on Christmas or have a rager on New Year’s Eve.

Again, changes this significant will not happen overnight. It is easier to raise or lower an age than it is to reevaluate and reconstruct our behaviors. The truth is, however, that in order see positive improvement we have to get to the root of the problem which is the social behaviors we have created.

Now that that physiological issues have been explored, I want to return to the social aspect of drinking. Students drink underage despite the age twenty one MLDA, and that is no secret. However, while college students don’t drink as much as we once thought, they do consume alcohol, and the college setting is where most of that drinking occurs. According to a recent national study by Timberlake et al. college students are more likely to drink than non-college peers. There appears to be a drinking curve: college-bound high school students don’t drink frequently until the reach college. Binge drinking habits rise once these students arrive to college then it tapers off once these students graduate. This is attributed to living in an environment where drinking is encouraged. (2)

A study done by the Center for Alcohol and Other Drug Studies and Services at San Diego State University showed that environment truly had an effect on drinking habits. The study went as followed: “For three academic semesters, researchers conducted a multi-level examination of 1,304 young adults (751 males, 553 females) who were attending 66 college parties in private residences located close to an urban public university in southern California. Measures included observations of party environments, self-administered questionnaires, and collection of blood-alcohol concentrations (BrACs).” (1) Results of the study are below.

• Young women drank more heavily than males at themed events. These events tended to have sexualized themes and costumes.” (2)
• Larger parties were associated with less drinking, whichy could be attributed to there simply being less alcohol available at larger parties. (2)

Other studies have shown that:

• Students who attend an institution with little diversity and low alcohol prices tend to drink more as well. (2)
• Although many individuals can resist environmental influences, some collegiate environments are powerful enough to influence almost everyone. (3)

The relationship between environment and drinking has much more depth that can be described in one blog entry, however, it is evident that is does have a significant influence upon drinking habits. It is obviously not solely a question of age, but really many factors including the environment in which students drink, reinforced social behaviors of society, as well as certain physiological components.

Sources:

1. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/01/080103161543.htm

2. http://www.duke.edu/~amwhite/College/college3.htm

3. http://www.collegedrinkingprevention.gov/SupportingResearch/Journal/presley.aspx

After looking at underage drinking in a more social manner, I decided that I wanted to investigate the physiological aspect of the issue. An obvious physical repercussion of drinking is being “hung over.” Drinking too much can lead to feeling nausea, dehydrated, fatigue, and have body aches and a headache the following morning. However, alcohol has a profound effect on the brain and its development especially in those under the age of twenty one.

People always joke about suffering from brain damage after a night of heavy drinking. However, it’s not all completely false. According to the American Medical Association, the adolescent brain continues to mature all the way through one’s youth all the way to age 20.  Drinking during this developmental time can cause serious and possibly irreversible damage to the brain. Additionally, drinking during youth impairs learning and memory more than drinking during adulthood does. Young people need only drink about half the amount of alcohol to feel the same negative effects adults would.

There are two specific areas that alcohol damages significantly: the hippocampus and the prefrontal area of the cortex (Source: http://www.ama-assn.org/ama/pub/category/9416.html).

• The hippocampus handles many types of memory and learning and suffers from the worst alcohol-related brain damage in teens. Those who had been drinking more and for longer had significantly smaller hippocampi (10 percent).

Diagram courtesy of Morphonix.com

• The prefrontal area (behind the forehead) undergoes the most change during adolescence. Researchers found that adolescent drinking could cause severe changes in this area and others, which play an important role in forming adult personality and behavior and is often called the CEO of the brain.

Diagram courtesy of www.dwp.gov.uk

It is clear that there are severe physiological repercussions that result from consuming alcohol at a young age. This serves as evidence that age really does matter. Other issues aside, lowering the drinking age to 18 would be physically  dangerous. Alcohol has completely different effects on young people then it does adults. Furthermore, being that people in this age range are going to school and trying to obtain degrees, being able to legally impair one’s brain function is not a very logical choice. When considering the set age of the MLDA, I think the physical problems that accompany drinking during youth should be under careful consideration.

After introducing the idea of social beliefs surrounding drinking in the college sphere, I did a little bit of investigating about college students beliefs about alcohol. Just from the small amount of researching I found, it is evident that college students truly overestimate how much their peers are truly drinking.

• According to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health 83% of undergraduates ages 18-22 are not heavy drinkers. Actually,
• The American Freshman Study investigated the partying trend and discovered that freshman drinking as declined 43 percent since 1987 which is a record low.
• The Core Alcohol and Drug Survey fund that the majority of college students drink an average of two or fewer drinks a week and three-quarters of college students drink moderately, infrequently or not at all.

Source: http://www.alcoholstats.com/page.aspx?id=137#48

This is just scratching the surface as far as research goes. However, just from these few examples that it’s clear that there is a flaw in how college students view drinking. It has become a societal assumption that college students drink and party frequently. Actually, it has almost become an expectation that college students drink. Freshman entering college feel as though they are expected to drink and go out when they enter college because that is what they think their older peers are doing and if they don’t they will be considered “uncool.” However, it is clear from the survey results that students aren’t partying as hard as once assumed.

Since alcohol use isn’t as severe as thought, it is clear that a shift in perceptions of college drinking needs to occur. I believe that to achieve this it is going to be beyond parents and administration to make a change. Yes, these people do have some influence over college students, but the truth of the matter is students are more influenced by their peers. Furthermore, sometimes when students are told to do something from a higher power it tends to have an adverse effect and students rebel against what they are asked to do. However, it would be more influential if students were advised by their peers instead.

Like any debatable issue, the minimum legal drinking age is a doubled edged sword. It has several arguments for and against it all appearing to be plausible. However, as I was taking a closer look at the arguments against the age-21 MLDA, I found some flaws. After doing some research and investigating, I decided to use this post to counter the arguments against the age-21 MLDA and clarify some points.

If alcohol is made available at 18, then by the time adolescents are in college the appeal of drinking will have worn off.

The problem with making alcohol available to 18 year old is that adolescents are now able to provide alcohol for those even younger which will then make enforcing the MLDA upon high school students exceedingly difficult. The behavior of the 18 year old age group is particularly influential upon those in the middle school age range. Should they begin to imitate the behavior of their superiors it will complicate enforcing the MLDA in high school even further. As far as college drinking behavior goes, there is no evidence that there were fewer campus alcohol problems when lower drinking ages were in effect. (1)

In the United States, when one turns 18 you are officially an adult. You can vote, enlist in the military, and make purchases of certain items such as firearms, pornography, and tobacco products. Why then cannot one drink at 18?

Although 18 is when one is considered officially an adult, the 18 year old body cannot physiologically  handle alcohol consumption. Drinking before the age of 21 can lead to developing alcohol dependence or abuse later in life. Furthermore, the brain develops well into the early twenties and alcohol consumption can
harm the developing brain. (1) Underage drinking can also lead to elevated blood pressure and possibly even heart disease. (2)

Those under the age of 21 are still drinking, therefore the age-21 MLDA isn’t very effective.

It is true that those under the age of 21 do consume alcohol. However, since the age-21 MLDA has been enacted rates of youth drinking have declined. Furthermore, the rate of alcohol related deaths and vehicle fatalities decreased with the enactment of the age-21 MLDA. For more specific figures, be sure to check out my fact sheet. Additionally, college students aren’t drinking as much as we think. Check out this website for more facts and figures.

Sources:

1. http://www.alcoholpolicymd.com/alcohol_and_health/study_legal_age.htm

2. http://www.collegedrinkingprevention.gov/CollegeStudents/anatomy/InteractiveBody_flash.aspx

Photo courtesy of Meghan Wagner in the Facebook group “10 Commandments of College”

So, you may have been wondering why I started of this post with a picture of two random girls drinking. Well, as I was procrastinating the other day by perusing Facebook pictures, I stumbled upon a plethora of photos just like this one. Tons and tons of photos depicting students “beer bonging,” chugging, playing beer pong, and passed out with lewd Sharpie portraits on their faces surfaced quite frequently. And then I noticed that I wasn’t even surprised or shocked that I saw these photos.

I am aware that this “Animal House” behavior has been around for a while. I have heard many college glory day stories from relatives, and it is clear that my generation wasn’t the first to do keg stands in a fraternity basement. However, this long term behavior had to be created somehow. The reality is we created it. Society in general is socially constructed. We decide what our values, beliefs, and norms will be. We decide what we consider acceptable and not acceptable behavior. It is true that we don’t necessarily condone behavior like depicted above, but we obviously haven’t done much to oppose it either. I know plenty of adults who have accepted their son/daughter’s behavior simply because “It is college,” and “kids are going to drink.” We don’t like the outcome, yet we still reaffirm the behavior.

The connection I want to make between this discussion and the MLDA is that the issue may not be exactly about age. Instead of changing the drinking age, perhaps we should think about changing how we view drinking in the college sphere. Instead of enforcing a physical set of rules, perhaps the beliefs and behaviors we accept about alcohol should change. Don’t get me wrong, I am not saying that this is going to happen overnight, but if it is even a slight shift in our views of youth behavior regarding alcohol could help in underage drinking. Not to say there aren’t physiological issues associated with drinking before the age of 21, perhaps modifying how we reaffirm and construct these realities surrounding drinking could serve as a possible solution.

When I first created this blog, I intended to avoid taking sides on the particular issue I was addressing. However, as I continue to conduct my research, however daunting it may be, I am finding it slightly easier to choose a side, Additionally, I think it would be more beneficial for my readers if I were to choose a side so that as they follow my entries and evaluate my points, they will find some sort of inspiration to take action on the issue.

That being said, I found myself leaning more towards keeping the minimum legal drinking age at 21. Althought there are several sounds arguments against it, I still believe that the drinking age is doing what it was created to do.

However, the drinking age has not always been 21. I was never aware of how the drinking age came to be. here is what I found out:

Following Prohibition, the Minimum Legal Drinking Age (MLDA) was set at 21 years of age. Circa the 1970s, several states changed the MLDA to 18, 19, 20 which was a function of lowering of the voting age. However, drunk driving began to run rampant and vehicle casualties and injuries saw an increase during the 1970s.

Due to the rise in alcohol-related incidents, pressure began to rise on raising the MLDA back to 21. Several states did raise the MLDA back to 21, however, youth began crossing state lines in order to consume alcohol which subsequently lead to the Uniform Drinking Age Act of 1984. The act stated that all states must raise the MLDA to 21 or else federal transportation funds would be significantly lessened for those states that did not comply.

Following this rise, there has been a countless studies done on the effects of the MLDA. What my research has shown me that the MLDA has lessened youth injuries and fatalities that are alcohol related. Furthermore, there are numerous physiological effects that underage drinking can catalyze. For more specific facts about the MLDA age, be sure to check out the Fact Sheet page on my blog. There I go into detail about how the MLDA has aided in decreasing alcohol related issues, physiological issues that occur due to underage drinking, and other options to preventing underage drinking other than lowering the MLDA.

On a more personal note, I truly do not think that at the age of 18 that the body and the mind can truly cope with the effects of alcohol. I have seen many a freshman, fresh out of high school and newly legal, stumbling around Oakland begging for an underage. However, I’ve also seen those of age mimicking the exact same behavior which leads me to surmise that maturity plays a huge role in responsible alcohol consumption. If those of age cannot properly consume alcohol then how is it possible that a 18 year old would? I think the focus should not be on age, but on education. I believe it is crucial to educate youth on how ot properly consume alcohol, not make it more accessible for them. Hopefully through my blog I can better elborate on this side of the issue and provide readers with sound, trustworthy information to support my stance.

I think that in order to understand the debate surrounding the drinking age, it is essential to investigate the drinking age itself. Before delving into the laws and the history of the drinking age, it would be helpful to analyze is where the United States falls in comparison to other countries in regards to its minimum drinking age.

Before comparing the drinking age in other countries, it is essential to differentiate between drinking age and purchasing age. Many countries have a minimum age at which residents of that country can purchase alcohol and then a separate age at which residents are allowed to consume alcohol. There are also some nuances in several of the countries laws regarding alcohol. For example, some countries have different ages for purchase and consumption based on what type of alcohol it is. In Germany one can buy or consume alcohol at the age of 16, but must be 18 in order to buy or consume distilled beverages (liquor). There are similar policies like this in other countries, especially in Europe. Some also base the purchase and consumption age on the alcoholic content percentage.

The drinking/purchasing age is extremely diverse and varying all over the world. Some countries are liberal in the fact that they do not even designate a drinking age. Russia, the Dominican Republic, Denmark, Hungary, and Cuba do not require a minimum drinking age. I guess if you can see over the bar there you are good to go.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, some countries completely ban the consumption and purchasing of alcohol. In Iran alcohol is completely outlawed except for use in Jewish or Christian religious ceremonies. Kuwait, Sudan, Brunei, Bangladesh, and Saudi Arabia are a few others that completely ban alcohol consumption or purchasing.

Many countries have adopted 18 as the minimum legal drinking age. That being said, in comparison the United States has a rather strict policy on the purchasing and consumption of alcohol. However, as a mentioned before there are a plethora of complications and specifics that prohibit one thing but not the other. This is the perfect example of why the drinking age is so debatable. There are an extreme amount of factors that have to be taken into consideration in regards to when a person should be able to purchase or consume alcohol which results in all the nuances in the laws around the world.

Take a look here in order to look more in depth on the varying drinking ages around the world.