What is it about a law that makes us want to break it or follow it?

I suppose some people break laws when they’re in a hurry, such as the guy who ran the red light and almost killed me this morning.

Some of us do it because it seems like no big deal, such as watering plants outside the designated time.

Then there’s the group that most all of us are in, the one that breaks a particular law because everybody is breaking it, and because we don’t agree with it.

I’m talking about the drinking age, but only because more than 100 presidents and chancellors at colleges and universities around the nation started talking about it first.

As reported by The Associated Press Monday, the movement is called the Amethyst Initiative, named after the gemstone believed to ward off public drunkenness in ancient Greece.

Started this past July, the initiative consists of a list of university heads who have signed a statement saying the drinking age needs to be debated.

As with every idea, you have to look at the interests of the people involved.

The job of a university president would be easier if drinking was legal on his campus, and that could be a strong incentive for leaders to back the idea.

However, I do think it is worth taking a look at studies that both sides of the argument cite.

In the book Reducing Underage Drinking: A Collective Responsibility, published by the Institute of Medicine, there are quite a few studies that show raising the drinking age did save thousands of lives.

When the laws first went into effect, the book says, there is “substantial evidence” to suggest they contributed to the decline in alcohol used during the 1980s.

The book goes on to say that “research demonstrates a clear relationship between increases in the minimum drinking age and reduced rates of drinking.”

The Amethyst Initiative’s first response is to stir everybody up with the same “old enough to sign contracts and join the military, old enough to drink” argument.

Hey, it worked to lower the voting age, right?

Then the group also cites studies, on AwwmethystInitiative.org, that say there is a lot more that led to the decline in underage drinking than making the legal age 21.

The studies point out everything from seatbelts to increased awareness of the dangers of drunk driving could have contributed to the hundreds of thousands of lives saved.

So where does that leave us?

You can find a study that says almost anything these days; there are plenty of them out there.

Need to find an obscure one from New Mexico that states not selling alcohol on Sunday saves lives? Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue did.

So I think we should urge our lawmakers to take a look at what these signatories are trying to say.

The legal drinking age of 21 wasn’t actually a Federal law written into the books, it was the Federal government saying it would deny the states money if they didn’t accept the age of 21.

I agree with the initiative that the lid was closed then on any possibility of a meaningful debate.

The people at the Amethyst Initiative simply are trying to “support an informed and dispassionate public debate over the effects of the 21-year-old drinking age.”

I have no problem with public debate – do you?

- Marc McAfee is a senior from Kennesaw majoring
in broadcast news.