"Be wary of strong drink. It can make you shoot at tax collectors ... and miss." *

There shouldn’t be a minimum legal drinking age, although I probably wouldn’t mind too much if it were set at, oh, say, six. If Mothers Against Drunk Driving and the rest of the Uber-Nannies out there want to keep pre-schoolers from bellying up to the bar, well, okay. After all, it’s for the children.

Syndicated columnist and (inexplicably) frequent reason contributor, Steve Chapman offers scraps of arguments against a proposal from an advocacy group called Choose Responsibility to lower the legal drinking age to 18. To date, the proposal has been signed by over 120 college presidents, predictably incurring the irrational wrath of MADD and other quasi-professional scolds.

Chapman’s arguments, such as they are, pretty much boil down to the assertion that many people under the age of 21 are too immature to drink and that more of them will drink and suffer problems as a result. As a corollary, if 18 year olds can buy alcohol, those under the age of 18 are more likely to have more ready access to booze because high school seniors will buy it for sophomores and freshmen, etc.

Here, however, is the money quote from Chapman’s lamentable column:

Why permit 18-year-olds to vote but not drink? Because they have not shown a disproportionate tendency to abuse the franchise, to the peril of innocent bystanders.

Mr. Chapman, if you don’t think 18 year olds who vote for Republican or Democratic candidates are imperiling innocent bystanders like me, you obviously haven’t been paying attention.

Seriously, though, there’s so much wrong with this mindset it’s hard to know where to begin in rebutting it. Here, however, is the principal objection:

The mere fact that something is dangerous or harmful to some members of a group is never sufficient justification to prohibit all members of a group from using or having access to it. The fact that some members of group X will abuse access such that members of the general population are harmed is equally insufficient to prohibit all members of that group from having access.

I accept the fact that institutional rights and privileges, e.g., voting, driving on public roads, necessarily involve some sometimes arbitrary regulation. Moreover, I certainly accept the fact that libertarianism is, for the most part, an NC-17 rated show. Children do require restrictions on their liberty for their own good. The question, however, is whether the default agent responsible to impose such restrictions should be the state or their parents. Admittedly, some parents sometimes fail in those responsibilities and the state must then intercede. See, however, the immediately prior paragraph as to why that fact alone does not justify depriving all parents of properly parental authority.

Serving your 16 year old daughter a half glass of wine at Thanksgiving or sharing a beer or two with your 17 year old son as you both watch the game or accepting the fact that your 19 year old college student may well get drunk on campus as opposed to driving off into the woods with friends specifically to go binge drinking, thus creating an even more dangerous situation isn’t an abrogation of parental responsibility. Imposing a universal prohibition to reduce abuse by a few and inadvertently but predictably creating such even more dangerous situations is.

Moreover, effectively arguing that it should be easier for the typical high school student to buy illegal drugs (never mind that they should be legal, too) than a six-pack of beer is, at best, a fairly odd case on utilitarian grounds as to why eighteen year olds shouldn't be permitted to drink. If Mr. Chapman doesn't understand these things, I trust the rest of the good folks over at reason do.

(* - Robert Heinlein)