A group of college and university presidents have formed what they call the Amethyst Initiative. They raise the hoary question about reducing the drinking age from 21 to 18. They say keeping the minimum age for drinking at 21 encourages binge drinking among young adults between 18 and 21 who know how to get all the alcoholic beverages they want. The presidents’ reasoning is not immediately apparent.

For most other purposes beside drinking, 18 is the age of majority. At that age a person can exercise full rights of citizenship. He can enter into contracts, get a driver’s license, fight and die for his country. The denial of the right to lawfully drink alcoholic beverages seems to them an overweening, overprotective bit of regulation. And like Prohibition of the 1920s, it doesn’t work.

They point to military service in which a 20-year-old soldier cannot lawfully drink a beer. This is particularly persuasive on its face. But it takes a totally different skill set to die in battle than to drink a beer. They are not comparable and by themselves make only a fallacious argument for lowering the drinking age.

Very few Americans would want to deny a soldier a beer, regardless of his age. But that raises a pivotal issue. One beer is not likely to quench the soldier’s thirst. One beer leads to another. And for some people, soldiers or not, they drink until they are intoxicated.

Now here’s the key to the issue. The more intoxicated you become, the more certain you become that you can drive home. That is the insidious evil of alcohol. While it robs you of your ability, it encourages you to try. In other words, it impairs your judgment. If young people learn nothing else before they start drinking, they must understand this paradox and internalize it.

No one wants to be governed by a scold. Organizations such as Mothers Against Drunk Driving, as sincere as they can be in their goals, are regarded as seriously by the young as the old temperance leagues. Shades of Carrie Nation swinging her hatchet to break up drinking.

Young people, like most people, want to have a good time. When the drinking starts, they probably don’t plan to drink to excess. But it’s easy to do. They don’t plan to drive home drunk. They don’t think that far ahead. And by the time they are ready to go home, they are sure they can make it. They have to get home. How else but to drive?

In surveys conducted by various newspapers around the country, readers strongly favor lowering the drinking age. While acknowledging that binge drinking is a problem for young adults, a high percentage of respondents believe the drinking age should be reduced.

In looking at the drinking age around the world, we find the United States has the highest. The great majority of countries set it between 16 and 18. They have found it reduces binging because the drinkers need not do it surreptitiously. In fact, it is very much like sexual activity among young people. You can educate the heck out of the subject, you can pass all the laws you want, they are still going to do it.

So does prohibition of sex or drinking work? Demonstrably not.

The National Highway Safety Administration determined that setting the drinking age at 21 cut traffic fatalities among drivers 18 to 20 by 13 percent. Following that logic, they could reduce traffic fatalities even more by raising the drinking age to 25 or 30. Obviously, that is ridiculous. It is just as ridiculous to keep it at 21.

Families in most other countries introduce alcoholic beverages to their children early in life, getting them used to its effects and learning how to deal with it.

Prohibiting young people from doing activities they are actually old enough to handle can only breed disrespect and law breaking. It makes good sense to lower the drinking age to 18, but only with the understanding no student be permitted to escape high school without a full appreciation of the judgment-impairing effect of alcohol. It is the sine qua non for responsible drinking.

E-mail comments for publication to editor@azbiz.com. Contact Lionel Waxman at territorial@waxmanmedia.com. Waxman’s Flashpoint commentaries are published in The Daily Territorial.