I'll drink to that

A former college president is leading a movement to lower the drinking age from 21 to 18, and I agree with his position. John M. McCardell, the former head of Vermont's Middlebury College, started a non-profit group called Choose Responsibility, which espouses the view that when we force drinking by otherwise legal adults underground the circumstances become more dangerous.

Most other nations allow 18 to 20-year-olds to drink legally, while in a significant number of countries the legal age is 16. There are even a handful of places that require no minimum age to imbibe. A glance at a few locations in Europe puts this in perspective: France and Germany have a minimum of 16 for beer and wine, with all alcohol OK at 18; the UK has similar laws, but children at home with parents can drink starting at age 5 (yes, five); in Italy the drinking age is 14. In many of these places children grow up having a bit of wine or beer at the dinner table, which serves to demystify the stuff, and that is a good thing.

The consumption of alcoholic beverages has been part of almost every human culture for about 12,000 years. There are, of course, people of all ages who have problems with alcohol, and certainly I am not advocating that we abandon legal age limits, but I think that a number of other countries handle public policy in this area a little better, and we would be wise to examine their approach.