Fox News had an interesting, non-headliner story this morning. One that The Bull found to be way overdue…
College presidents from about 100 of the nation’s best-known universities, including Duke, Dartmouth and Ohio State, are calling on lawmakers to consider lowering the drinking age from 21 to 18, saying current laws actually encourage dangerous binge drinking on campus.
The movement called the Amethyst Initiative began quietly recruiting presidents more than a year ago to provoke national debate about the drinking age.
“This is a law that is routinely evaded,” said John McCardell, former president of Middlebury College in Vermont who started the organization. “It is a law that the people at whom it is directed believe is unjust and unfair and discriminatory.”
[snip]
McCardell’s group takes its name from ancient Greece, where the purple gemstone amethyst was widely believed to ward off drunkenness if used in drinking vessels and jewelry. He said college students will drink no matter what, but do so more dangerously when it’s illegal.
The statement the presidents have signed avoids calling explicitly for a younger drinking age. Rather, it seeks “an informed and dispassionate debate” over the issue and the federal highway law that made 21 the de facto national drinking age by denying money to any state that bucks the trend.
But the statement makes clear the signers think the current law isn’t working, citing a “culture of dangerous, clandestine binge-drinking,” and noting that while adults under 21 can vote and enlist in the military, they “are told they are not mature enough to have a beer.” Furthermore, “by choosing to use fake IDs, students make ethical compromises that erode respect for the law.”
Read the rest here.
Finally! 
People whom the ’sheeple’ of this Nation just might listen to are on the right track!
I have never been a drinker. My very first beer was opened on the New London Submarine Base in Groton, CT some four months after I had enlisted in the US Navy. For whatever reason, The Bull has never developed a taste for alcohol to any large extent. To this day my drinking is limited to about a half-dozen Guiness Stout spread over a year. Now that that is said, I’ve got to tell you that the worst feeling I ever had towards the government of any state was when I found that though I was old enough to die for my Country the State of Virginia had decided I was not old enough to have a beer with my shipmates.
Talk about a kick in the gut! 
It wasn’t the beer. It wasn’t even the lost companionship. It was the fact that the State, (back then it was still a state-by-state thing), considered me to be untrustworthy. Mind you, Virginia was my home state, too. Do any of my readers remember Audie Murphy? In 27 months of combat action in World War II, Murphy became one of the most decorated United States combat soldiers of World War II. He received the Medal of Honor, (the U.S. military’s highest award for valor), along with 32 additional U.S. medals, five from France, and one from Belgium. Later he enjoyed careers in both acting and country music. One of America’s greatest heroes would not be allowed to drink were he of today’s generation.
There is far more to this than just the military angle, though. There is the voting age issue. There is the issue of peer pressure as well. Exactly why is a 21 year old a better person than a 20 year old? a nineteen year old? 18?
That’s right, there is NO magic age! Not for drinking, voting or fighting.
After all, Audie Murphy himself developed a problem with both drugs and alcohol – but not until he was about 40 years old, and not when he was a kid in the military.
Common Sense. That is all that is required here to see that the National drinking age should be lowered to 18. Simple, everyday, Common Sense.
Even the ‘Dims’ should be behind this change in the law for in Europe the folks don’t have such a draconian view of alcohol, and Democrats love Europeans.
Check out the Amethyst Initiative and see what they are all about, then make up your own mind. I believe that you will agree with The Bull on this one.
I guarantee that Nancy Gail does!
Bull, out. 
