Editorial: Don't mess about with drinking age

Not long ago public health advocates and the press in the United States were earnestly discussing the problem of the President's 19-year-old daughter Jenna. She and her twin Barbara did not move into the White House with their parents but remained in Texas, where they had grown up and now attend university, trying to lead lives as normal as possible.

One evening in Austin, Jenna Bush tried to order a beer with a meal by presenting the ID card of a friend aged over 21. Some time earlier she had been prosecuted for drinking in a bar. She had received a small fine and was ordered to do eight hours community service as well as attend six hours of alcohol awareness classes.

Her repeat offence brought an outbreak of hand-wringing from the President down. There were those, referring to Mr Bush's own past, who wondered whether there was an inherited problem. Others pondered the dangers of under-age drinking generally. And, inevitably, pundits analysed the damage teenage children can do to a political career. There was much less said, surprisingly, about the state law that denies a 19-year-old the right to drink in civilised surroundings.

Until just 18 months ago, the law of New Zealand did exactly the same. In 1999 Parliament lowered the drinking age to 18 despite strenuous representations from public health campaigners who said it would lead to more binge drinking and give teenagers under 18 greater access to alcohol. MPs coupled the lowering of the age with stronger obligations on licensees to check the age of those they serve.

Identification cards became commonplace. Young people now habitually carry them and have been well accustomed to requests for proof of age from bar and liquor store attendants. Yet research presented to a public health conference last week suggested that the number of outlets asking for age identification is now fewer than six months ago. This week the research was discussed by the cabinet and the Ministry of Justice has been asked to review the enforcement of the 1999 legislation.

These are ominous signs. While any change to the Sale of Liquor Act would probably require a free vote in Parliament, as the 1999 Act did, this is not the same Parliament. It has a Government much more given to social regulation than the last. The Prime Minister reaffirmed her opposition to the 1999 liberalisation when she announced the cabinet's decision this week.

She doubted Parliament was ready to restore the previous drinking age but she wants a "proper evaluation." Let's hope the cabinet has nothing more draconian in mind. If the ministry finds the industry is flagging in its enforcement of the drinking age, the Government should put tougher measures to Parliament. But removing the rights of all 18 and 19-year-olds should not be among them. Jenna Bush is by no means unusual. At 18 and 19 young people have left school and begun to make their way in the adult world. To deny them the right to drink in normal social surroundings would be a gross infringement of their liberties.

Binge drinking by their age group presents a problem, but not only in their age group, and probably not involving the majority at any age. Nor is it a problem that can be cured simply by shutting them out of bars and liquor stores. Teenagers were binge drinking at beaches, in parks and at private parties long before the law was changed in 1999. The so-called drinking age applies only to licensed outlets. The real drinking age is beyond the reach of regulation.

So are the problems. Binge drinking and the like can be countered by public health campaigns, not restrictions on the guilty and innocent alike. Young people have proved receptive to campaigns of common sense. Opposition leader Jenny Shipley is not the only parent to have noticed that young people are now less likely to drink and drive, for example.

It should not be too hard to make drunkenness as unfashionable as drink-driving has become. The liquor industry, if it is wise, will help public agencies to project an image of civilised drinking that spurns those who don't know the limits. Concerted social pressure is better than returning to a law that treated 18 and 19-year-olds as children - a law they would be likely to defy.