Teach Responsible Drinking

Laurie Leiber, director of the Center on Alcohol Advertising, is opposed to
lowering the drinking age as a way to deal with underage drinking and is
totally deaf to Peter Coors' proposal to teach kids to drink responsibly
("Lower drinking age wrong way to deal with underage alcohol consumption,"
Letters, Oct. 17).

Coors, CEO of Coors Brewing, says it's time to look for new approaches to a
seemingly intractable problem by teaching kids how to drink responsibly.

Primarily striking out at Coors' TV ads, Leiber insinuates that the ads
promote domestic violence and seduce adolescents by irresponsible
advertising. It's all in the eyes of the beholder. For example, Leiber
supports ironclad efforts to curb availability, raise alcohol taxes and
limit advertising to prevent underage drinking. And, best of all, she says:
"I will also continue to ask young people to observe the law and wait until
they are 21 to drink."

In the best of all possible worlds, young people would follow the rules and
wait un til 21 to take a drink. They would wait until 16 to drive and
would practice abstinence for safe sex. But this is not Eden.

Young people, for better or worse, feel omnipotent and need to test the
world when they break away from their dependent parental relationship.
Doesn't Leiber realize how easy it is for young people to run rings around
rules?

For example, there are no advertisements for marijuana, and yet young
people use it. Telling young people to observe the law is no winner.
Teaching young people how to behave responsibly is realistic.

Please, don't give alcohol a specialness it doesn't deserve. Since young
people already experiment with alcohol, lowering the drinking age and
teaching them how to use it responsibly is the only way to go.

Morris E. Chafetz, president
Health Education Foundation
Washington, D.C.