Earlier in the year, The New York Times reported that “123 presidents from colleges including Dartmouth, Duke, Ohio State and Tufts are supporting the petition, which says that raising the drinking age to 21 has fostered a culture of clandestine binge drinking and that students’ use of fake identification has eroded their respect for the law.”

While this claim may be true, lowering the legal drinking age to 18 may not necessarily be the best way to handle this problem. Binge drinking probably would occur either way due to cultural norms and fake identification would be passed on to high-school-aged kids looking to pass as 18.

In a study done by Harvard University, it was discovered that there is definite link between the drinking culture of universities and underage binge drinking. This same study showed that 2 in 5 four-year college students drink in excess, meaning 5 or more drinks in a row.

Underage drinking in college has become a culturally acceptable thing.

Advocates of lowering the drinking age say that the rules in place are not working, so lowering the drinking age to 18 must be the solution. In actuality, lowering the drinking age shows no evidence for solving the problem. Most just say something like, “Join the rest of the world and lower the age. If you stop treating young adults like children, they’ll stop behaving like children.”

While this way of thinking may work in some cases, it certainly wouldn’t when it comes to underage drinking in America, especially in Arizona where many college students have cars.

Not only would lowering the drinking age fail to solve anything, it would exacerbate the problem. For example, it would likely increase the number of drunk drivers on the road. With such a high number of DUIs already given out in Arizona, it would continue to rise if the drinking age was lowered. Younger drivers are prone to reckless driving as it is, and being under the influence would cause for much more concern.

The Harvard study also explained that exposing kids to alcohol at a young age could potentially create habits that lead to serious problems later on in life. It showed that the brain is still developing until age 30, so the longer drinking is put off, the better it will be for development.

In a 2007 article in the Times, Chancellor John D. Wiley of the University of Wisconsin-Madison said, “Unambiguously, alcohol abuse is the No. 1 health and safety problem on every college campus.” Wiley continued, “I don’t even know what would be No. 2. Just about every unpleasant incident, every crime, involves alcohol abuse by the victim or the perpetrator.”

Finding a viable way to dissolve this problem is essential to the public good.

It is near impossible to rid college campuses of underage drinking because it has subconsciously become acceptable in society. While it’s hard to discern what would be a good solution to this problem, lowering the drinking age would be a quick fix that wouldn’t actually fix anything, just make it worse.

It would be like putting a Band-Aid on a broken arm.

Reach Houston at hfriend1@asu.edu.