Response
The consequences of alcohol use extend far beyond the individual with alcohol problems, affecting the well-being of others around them and imposing staggering costs on society as a whole. Consequences of alcohol abuse include alcohol related fatalities, and injuries, birth defects from fetal alcohol syndrome, violent crimes and suicide, economic costs of reduced worker productivity and increased absenteeism, the expenses of treatment and support, and the incalculable costs in human suffering and premature death.

Argument
What about individual freedom? Don't people have the right to drink as they please?

Response
Freedom includes freedom from certain pressures as well as the freedom to do certain things. Students have a right to experience college without constant pressure to drink, and free of the inconsiderate, insulting, intimidating, and sometimes even criminal behavior of the minority of students who engage in irresponsible high-risk drinking. Non-drinkers deserve the freedom to abstain without stigma. Protecting some freedoms may appear to impinge on the rights of others. However, we have come to accept many such limits, such as wearing seatbelts, designated drivers, and maximum speed limits, because they serve the greater good.

Argument
Lowering the drinking age will encourage students to be responsible consumers. They'll get an idea of their tolerance and learn to drink moderately in the open, rather than wildly at uncontrolled private parties away from school.

Response
No evidence exists to indicate that students will learn to drink responsibly simply because they are able to consume alcohol legally at a younger age. Countries with lower drinking ages suffer from alcohol-related problems similar to those in the U.S.

Argument
Minors still drink, so age-21 laws clearly don't work.

Response
Age-21 laws work. Young people drink less and less frequently in response. According to the National Highway Transportation Safety Commission, MLDA laws have saved an estimated 17,000 lives since states began implementing them in 1975, and they've decreased the number of alcohol-related youth fatalities among drivers by 63% since 1982.

Argument
Europe doesn't seem have a big drinking problem, yet over there even the children drink, and alcohol is treated as a natural part of life without all the legal fuss.

Response
The world's highest average levels of pure alcohol consumption (1982-1991) were in France. Luxembourg, Portugal, Spain. Hungary, Switzerland, Italy, Germany, and Belgium followed in order with per capita consumption well above the rate in the US. Heavier drinking contributes significantly to higher death rates. In Italy in 1990, for instance, there were 26.8 deaths per 100,000 from chronic liver disease and cirrhosis compared to 10.8 in the US.

Argument
Since only 10% of the population have an alcohol problem, aren't you over-reacting? Aren't you just neo-prohibitionist?

Response
The 10% statistic refers only to chronic heavy drinkers. According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, an estimated 76 million Americans are affected by alcoholism. Most of these problems are preventable, and prevention of these problems does not require elimination of alcohol. Our goal is not prohibition, but the creation of an environment where abstinence is always acceptable, heavy use is discouraged, and high-risk use is eliminated.

Argument
Aren't you promoting censorship when you say you want to ban alcohol ads?

Response
Alcohol advertising is not what concerns us. It is the deliberate deception and distortion, exclusion of health risk information, promotion of problem denial, "normalization" and glamorization of heavy drinking, and targeting of groups at high risk of alcohol problems (such as college students) that are our concern.

* This section excerpted from, "Raising More Voices than Mugs: Changing the College Alcohol Environment Through Media Advocacy" (DHHS/NCADI, 1992)