NYRA has campaigned to lower the legal drinking age to 18 for years,
and progress has been made. But the prospect of a lower drinking age
came one step closer to reality in the past month with the emergence
of the Amethyst Initiative, a group of over 120 college presidents
calling for a reconsideration of the drinking age.
NYRA ally Choose Responsibility, an organization which advocates for a
lower drinking age, and its director Dr. John McCardell, recently
created the Amethyst Initiative to bring the issue of the minimum
drinking age to the forefront of the national consciousness, and
they’ve generated an impressive amount of media attention in the past
few weeks. The Initiative’s call for public debate on alcohol policy
change has been covered prominently by major news sources, such as
CNN, Fox News, the Washington Post, the New York Times, NBC, AOL, the
Los Angeles Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Baltimore Sun,
Newsday, and many major websites and blogs. In a promising sign,
Mothers Against Drunk Driving, a large pro-21 organization, is taking
this very seriously, recently devoting 100% of the main page of their
website to countering our drinking age arguments. The momentum is
swinging in our favor, and our opponents are scrambling to compensate.
This is a major development on the drinking age front. Expect more
good news as NYRA capitalizes on this opportunity to push our drinking
age advocacy forward.
