The National Youth Rights Association (NYRA), a youth advocacy group, is actively recruiting college students in the District in a campaign to lower the national drinking age from 21 to 18.
The nonprofit, volunteer-run organization, is fighting against organizations like MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Driving) and CSPI (Center for Science in the Public Interest) to amend the National Minimum Drinking Age Act of 1984, which requires "all states to raise their minimum drinking age to 21 within two years or lose a portion of their federal-aid highway funds."
"Special interest groups like MADD will fight tooth and nail against us on this," said former AU student Alex Koronkay-Palicz, president and executive director of NYRA. "But I think people will realize the truth of the matter and [lowering the drinking age] will happen."
Koronkay-Palicz has been involved with NYRA since graduating from high school and starting the AU chapter of NYRA in fall 1999.
"NYRA fights for all sorts of rights that are denied to people because of their age," Koronkay-Palicz said. "The voting age, curfew laws, the drinking age ... We believe strongly that ageism is no different than racism or sexism, and there are many laws out there that unfairly discriminate against youth because of their age."
The United States is one of the few countries in the world that has a drinking age of 21. The drinking age varies from 15 to 20 in other countries such as Australia, Brazil, Switzerland and Canada. There are some countries like Portugal, which has no legal drinking age.
"We [the United States] need to stop thinking we know better than the rest of the world," Koronkay-Palicz said. "We don't. We need to learn from Europe where they have much lower drinking ages and they experience fewer problems with alcohol."
Koronkay-Palicz believes "lowering the drinking age and relaxing enforcement of it will together produce a culture where alcohol isn't a big deal and will bring us closer to the European model."
When asked if illegalities promote lawbreaking, Koronkay-Palicz said, "Absolutely. [Illegal activity] happens whenever something is made a forbidden fruit. People not only want to drink more, for the thrill, but are forced into more dangerous, unsupervised situations."
Koronkay-Palicz compared today's drinking age laws to prohibition laws of the 1920s.
"When alcohol was illegal for people of all ages, everyone went out and drank more and had more problems with alcohol," he said.
Organizations like MADD that oppose NYRA's campaign, believe lowering the drinking age to 18 will only encourage more adolescent drunk driving.
"[Of course], simply lowering the age isn't going to produce magical results overnight," said Koronkay-Palicz, who thinks drunk-driving incidents will decrease over time. "But I think it's time we face the fact that our current system isn't working."
"I think that 18 is a good drinking age," said freshman Suzanne Smith. "It promotes responsibility. Regardless of what the drinking age is, kids are going to rebel against the law, use fake ID and try to get into clubs when they're not of age."
Smith was a resident of Canada for five years, where alcohol policies are not as strict as they are in the United States.
"Every weekend [the cops] are outside house parties waiting to bust people," Smith said. "There are other things that they should be worried about [in the United States] - robbery, rape, abuse. In the big picture, [underage drinking] is so little."
NYRA has been "speaking at conferences, putting up flyers and getting into the media," to promote the drinking-age campaign, according to Koronkay-Palicz.
"I am 100 percent confident [the campaign] will be successful," he said. "But things are just getting started for us, we have a long road to travel yet."
Koronkay-Palicz expressed concern that the NYRA-AU chapter, the first local NYRA chapter, may not exist next fall.
"We really want people to get involved [with the NYRA-AU chapter] ... but it's kinda in limbo right now," he said. Koronkay-Palicz hopes more students will volunteer and "take charge of the chapter [to] keep things running."
With enough volunteers and a large enough campaign, Koronkay-Palicz feels the drinking age will once again be lowered to 18.
The National Minimum Drinking Age Act has "only [been in effect] for 20 years," he said. "Things can change."
More information is available at www.youthrights.org.
