Do any SD college presidents support lowering the drinking age?

By Gordon Garnos

THE ISSUE: Congress passed the National Minimum Drinking Age in 1984, setting that age at 21 throughout the land. Several states before then allowed those 18 and older to drink beer and liquor. Now, more than 100 college presidents have signed a statement supporting the Amethyst Initiative which, in effect, asks that the legal drinking age be lowered back to 18. In searching the internet, I was unable to find a list of those college presidents, but wondered if any of our college presidents in South Dakota signed the statement of support? If they did, they shouldn't have.

THOSE 100 OR SO college presidents who are asking Congress to reconsider the 1984 National Minimum Drinking Age Act have obviously had too many cocktails that have pickled their thinking process. At the same time they are trying to come up with ways that will curb binge drinking on their campuses. They contend the current law actually encourages dangerous binge drinking on campuses.

There is no question that binge drinking at any age level can kill, even in high schools. Examples of these deaths have made the newspapers more than once. But so have numerous stories that have been published about our young people being killed on our streets and highways from abusive drinking. Many of them have been innocent victims of drunk drivers as well.

According to the South Dakota Department of Highway Safety, last year (2007) there were 146 highway fatalities and 25 of these deaths were people, South Dakotans, under the age of 21. Twelve of those 25 were alcohol related deaths. Also, from Jan. 1 to Aug. 25 last year there were 103 highway fatalities in South Dakota and 41 of those were alcohol related. For the same time this year (2008) there have been 69 highway deaths and of those fatalities 22 of them were alcohol related. From these numbers it is clear that while binge drinking is a problem, so are the numbers taken from us on our streets and highways because of booze.

These college presidents and others feel the drinking age should be the same as joining the military, voting age, signing a contract or owning a car or a house. However, these generally don't have the potential that can lead to death.

IN FACT, THESE presidents should read the recently published College Alcohol Study by the Harvard school of Public Health. The study found that binge drinking wasn't so much as a hurry-up drunk thing as it was a reflection of the culture and conditions created or tolerated by schools.

Researchers also found that those colleges that are permissive or look the other way when it comes to their students boozing are more likely to have binge drinking than those schools that have policies banning booze and have substance-free housing. And, as strange as it sounds, researchers also found through numerous studies that 18 to 21 year olds drank more before the law was changed in 1984. Researchers have also found that 21-year-olds are generally more mature than 18-year-olds and, thus, more likely to be able to better handle alcohol.

Whether it is binge drinking or being in a fatal car accident, in both incidents, the end result way too often is death. We have seen both incidents happening to young South Dakotans and reported in our South Dakota newspapers. Incidents of such drinking have been reported at both of South Dakota's largest universities. But so have fatal car accidents with alcohol involvement.

MOTHERS AGAINST Drunk Driving (MADD) notes that lowering the drinking age would lead to more fatal car crashes. The organization is blaming college presidents of misrepresenting science and looking for an easy way out of an inconvenient problem. The leaders in MADD are even urging parents to give some major thought about sending their kids to the colleges whose presidents have signed the statement.

Drinking on campuses is about as old as the campuses. But that doesn't make it right. But for college presidents to condone a lower drinking age is as wrong as wrong can be. I just hope none of our South Dakota college presidents are on that list to lower the drinking age. Perhaps our Regents should take a look at that list.....

P.S.: Two criticisms were received after last week's column hit the newspapers. The inference was they didn't like the word "godfather" connected to any of the leaders of the South Dakota Democratic Party. "Sounds too much like the Mafia," one wrote.

Perhaps I should have said Senator Johnson is already a member of the pantheon of the South Dakota Democratic Party....

Gordon Garnos was long-time editor of the Watertown Public Opinion and recently retired after 39 years with that newspaper. Garnos, a lifelong resident of South Dakota except for his military service in the U.S. Air Force, was born and raised in Presho.

Study Finds 12 Percent of Native America Deaths Alcohol Related

Last year, the question was examined whether to open up the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation to alcohol sales on the reservation.

The logic was that the border towns like Whiteclay, Nebraska are "getting rich" off Pine Ridge dollars--dollars which could fill Pine Ridge public coffers. Also, since so many people on the reservation travel to towns like Whiteclay for alcohol, at least people wouldn't have to travel as far for it...and with the distance, increase the risk of an alcohol-related accident.

I argued at the time that selling alcohol on the reservation, and thus making it more accessible, would be like throwing gasoline on a fire. The reservation is already crippled with alcohol-related issues; why in the world would you want to add to that by making the source more accessible?

Today, the Rapid City Journal reports that the alcohol-related death rate is 12% for Native Americans, or more than three times the rate for the general population.

Dwayne Jarman, a CDC epidemiologist who works for the Indian Health Service and is one of the study's authors, said it is the first national survey that measures Native American deaths due to alcohol. It should be a "call to action" for federal, state, local and tribal governments, he said.

The researchers obtained their statistics by analyzing death certificates over the four-year period.

Traffic accidents and liver disease made up more than 25% of the deaths. Alcohol-related homicides and suicides made up 6.6% and 2.2% of the deaths, respectively.

That should quash any reasonable discussion of selling alcohol on the reservation.

Also, Fetal Alcohol Syndrome plagues the Native American community. When pregnant women consume significant amounts of alcohol, FAS can result. Symptoms of FAS include low birth weight, developmental delay, physical coordination problems, physical deformity, poor memory, and behavior problems.

According to a 1989 New York Times article, studies have found between 5 and 25% of children affected. Jeaneen Grey Eagle, who ran the alcohol recovery program Project Recovery at that time, estimated 25% of the children on Pine Ridge were affected, and said the rate was growing.

My church has done several outreach programs on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in recent years, and I've been involved in some of those.

The level of suffering which is occurring right here in the United States--right here in South Dakota--is staggering. And a great deal of it is due to alcohol abuse; some estimates of the rate of alcoholism go as high as 80%.

Pine Ridge suffers from a very high unemployment rate, high crime rates, and high spouse and child abuse.

Jarman is absolutely right. This report should serve as a call to action. How can we stand by while so many of our neighbors are suffering so?

The starting point must be the embrace of personal responsibility and objective moral values. Only by recognizing that each of us must take responsibility for doing the right thing, and that we are accountable to do the right thing, can the tide begin to turn on the suffering and despair going on in the Native American community.

Offenders Cheat 24/7 Program, But Deterrent Still Provided

Is South Dakota's 24/7 Sobriety Program to fight drunk driving getting the job done? KELO examines that question.

Drunk driving is an offense which can not only get the perpetrator hurt or killed, it can hurt or kill the innocent.

Alcohol is also a leading contributor to many other offenses including general assaults and domestic violence.

South Dakota has taken an aggressive approach to preventing repeat offenses with the 24/7 program which requires perpetrators of alcohol related offenses to come down to the police station twice a day to take a breathalyzer test.

But as one anonymous participate points out in the KELO article, the system isn't foolproof:

"I could get off work, I could go home, have a couple regular beers, wait a couple hours, go in there at 6 o'clock, and blow and I would be fine," George said. "Once I got done there, I could go home and have another three, four, five beers and the next morning I would be fine also."

George looked online to figure out just how much alcohol a person his size can dissipate over a period of time.

I've been out of law enforcement too long to remember clearly, but I seem to recall that lower concentrations of alcohol remain in the blood stream longer than they can be accurately detected by a breathalyzer. If so, a BAT might be in order for those who can't manage compliance by the breathalyzer.

Another possibility to strengthen enforcement might be to require testing three times a day (ever 8 hours), which would further reduce the amount of alcohol that could be consumed and still pass a breathalyzer test.

Yes, it would be more expensive, and yes, it would be more of a hassle. But if some offenders really can't stay off the booze, and if we're serious about reducing the alcohol problem our society has, it might be worth it.

Magistrate Judge John Hinrichs points out that the program is still having a positive effect:

Henrichs says if people have to calculate how much they can drink and still beat the system, then the 24/7 program is effective in cutting down on reckless drinking.

Both Henrichs and George agree it would be too difficult to force people on the program to take the breath test more than the current twice a day.

He has a good point. While it may not be keeping offenders off the substance that is causing them--and society--so many problems, it is almost certainly reducing the effects of the problem.

There's only so much alcohol you can take in and still be able to sober up in time for your next test. Perhaps this will mitigate if not eliminate repeat drunk driving offenses.

New Questions about Authorship of the Serenity Prayer

Reprinted by permission of The Christian Post

By Elena Garcia
Christian Post Reporter
Sun, Jul. 13 2008 02:57 PM EDT

The origins of the famed Serenity Prayer that has become a staple in Alcoholics Anonymous meetings and office décor is being challenged.

It was long believed that U.S. Protestant theologian Reinhold Niebuhr authored the prayer, which reads: "God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference." His family has dated the prayer back to 1943.

But Fred R. Shapiro, a librarian at Yale Law School, said he has found earlier usage of the prayer and suggested that the prayer could have been written by someone other than Niebuhr.

The earliest citation of the prayer Shapiro uncovered came from a 1936 newspaper clipping in which a YWCA women's organization in Syracuse quoted the prayer. Another pre-1943 usage of the prayer came from a public school counselor in Oklahoma City.

He said he found these references by using a historical database to do research for a new book he is editing called Yale Book of Quotations.

Shapiro writes about his doubts to the prayer's origin in the July/Aug 2008 issue of "Yale Alumni Magazine."

In the article, Shapiro brings attention to a quote in which Niebuhr admits the possibility of an earlier existence of the prayer.

"Of course, it may have been spooking around for years, even centuries, but I don't think so. I honestly do believe that I wrote it myself," Neibuhr said in the 1950 "Grapevine" magazine, published by Alcoholics Anonymous.

Shapiro offers two interpretations of his findings: (1) Niebuhr wrote the Serenity Prayer in the early or mid-1930s but his name from the prayer was dropped as it "quickly disseminated" in various circles or (2) Niebuhr "unconsciously adapted the Serenity Prayer in the early 1940s from already-circulating formulations of unknown origin."

He eventually goes with the latter interpretation.

“Reinhold Niebuhr was a very honest person and he was modest,” Shapiro said, according to Reuters. “He didn't appear to claim anything that wasn't truthful, so I believe that he probably unconsciously picked the Serenity Prayer, he heard it, or read it somewhere and forgot that he had seen it or read it somewhere.”

But in a rebuttal article also featured in "Yale Alumni Magazine," Niebuhr's daughter, Elisabeth Sifton, defended her father's work.

"To me, his new discoveries simply suggest that in the years before World War II, Reinhold Niebuhr's voice reached many more American churches and organizations than we previously realized," she wrote.

Sifton, who wrote The Serenity Prayer: Faith and Politics in Times of Peace and War in 2005, discussed her father's influence, noting that throughout the 1920s and 1930s he was preaching and praying at churches, college chapels and in the YMCA/YWCA network.

She also took issue with Shapiro's description of the prayer as "not intellectually sophisticated."

The prayer "strikingly diverges from the usual pieties, the prevailing self-congratulatory cheeriness, of twentieth-century American Protestantism," argued Sifton in the article. "But any theologian could instruct Mr. Shapiro, as my book evidently failed to, on the prayer's theological profundity."

She said that Shapiro's method of searching through databases is also not the best way to trace the prayer, since "prayers are presented orally, circulate orally, and become famous orally long before they are put on paper.”

“He offers only a flimsy chain of misconstrued circumstantial evidence to support his hunch that the prayer's author is likely not Niebuhr," contended Sifton.

Niebuhr was a professor of Applied Christianity at Union Theological Seminary in New York City for most of his professional career until his retirement. He was an important intellectual figure and theologian for his work in applied Christian ethics to contemporary political and social problems. He advocated a line of though called "Christian Realism" and spoke against Nazism, U.S. neutrality in World War II, and Soviet communism.

One version of the full Serenity Prayer, as attributed to Niebuhr, is as follows:

"God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference.

Living one day at a time; Enjoying one moment at a time; Accepting hardships as the pathway to peace; Taking, as He did, this sinful world as it is, not as I would have it; Trusting that He will make all things right if I surrender to His Will; That I may be reasonably happy in this life and supremely happy with Him Forever in the next. Amen."

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