Iowa City may have problem drinkers, but Iowa City does not have a problem with underage drinking. Rather, Iowa City has a problem with an unjust and unenforceable law. While that's not on the ballot, we in Iowa City can still send a message about prohibition for a class of legal adults.
The 21 year old drinking age is worse than a joke. It's an insult to young adults, whether they drink or not. The holier than though, we know what's good for you attitude of the 21 bar supporters is insufferable and comes down to: "we want to protect you by taking your rights away."
Their political naiveté is also remarkable. The yes forces either thought a council that had many times voted the issue down would magically change their minds when presented with the petition. Or they fell into the fallacy so common to special interests: "everybody I know is for this, we can't lose." The reason we have a 21 year old drinking age in the first place is that MADD moms vote and students don't. Guess what? This time they did. Did Rick Dobyns and Jim Clayton really expect that the students and bar owners wouldn't organize and get people to vote?
Yet it's not always easy to embrace the no side, with the obvious economic self-interest of the bar owners, the single issue focus of their candidate endorsements, and the disingenuous insistence of students that they just want to "go out to hear bands." C'mon. I was 19 once. 19 year olds don't want "non-alcohol alternatives." They want to DRINK. Sometimes as an end in itself, sometimes in conjunction with other activities (music, the quest for bed partners, etc.)
So, with no one innocent in this fight, the only way to look at this referendum is to look at principles.
AMENDMENT XXVI (Ratified July 1, 1971)
Section 1. The right of citizens of the United States, who are eighteen years of age or older, to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of age.
Section 2. The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
When you're 18, you're an adult. End of story.
Others phrase it old enough to fight, old enough to drink, but the pacifist in me steers away from that. Yet the principle is the same. We need to separate the issue of alcohol abuse from the false issue of the legal age. Our society decided on the legal age in 1971, at the height of the Vietnam era draft.
I've known 18 year olds who can drink responsibly. I'm 43 and I can't, so I do the only responsible thing and stay sober, 22 years now. And perhaps it's because of my own hard-won sobriety that I feel so strongly about the disconnect between alcohol abuse and age. Some of the problems ordinance advocates cite are real: the permanent spring break, date rape culture, the noise and mess along routers from apartments to bars. But these problems need to be addressed through other solutions. Take age off the table, and deal with alcohol abuse as alcohol abuse.
Because when you're 18, you're an adult. End of story.
I have heard countless elected officials privately express agreement with the point, but none will voice it in public. Usually they argue in private for 19, "to keep it out of the schools." I say that's the school's problem and we can't chip away at the principle.
The appropriate role for the Iowa City council on this issue is not to bar legal adults from nightclubs. The Council should instead be lobbying the legislature, demanding that they shove the federal highway money and give us a law that reflects the principle that 18 year olds are adults. Or, if the state of Iowa demands that we enforce this law, they can offer to pay for the armies of police officers it would take to keep 25,000 students from slaking their thirst on the weekend.
Strictly speaking, that's not what this election is about. But it cuts close to the point, just as the jail vote in 2000 cut close to the points of the drug war and the prison-industrial complex. There's really only one issue here, one principle that overrides all.
When you're 18, you're an adult.
End of story. Vote no.
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