Core values don't include drinking underage

  • Published
  • By Maj. Dean Cusanek
  • 81st Security Forces Squadron
KEESLER AIR FORCE BASE, Miss. (AFPN) --  It used to be that having a couple of drinks after work was the thing to do. A whole group would head from the dorms to the Airman's Club and drink the night away.

In the early 1980s, things started to change. The drinking age was changed to 19, then 20 and then 21. People were upset.

I hear the same complaints today that I heard then: "If I am old enough to fight and die for my country, I should be old enough to have a drink whenever I want one."

That sounds all "hoooah," but when you give it a sanity check, it isn't. To die for your country is one thing, but to die because you made a poor choice to break the law and drink underage is quite another.

Underage drinking is against the law.

So, what's so special about 21? It isn't just an age lawmakers pulled out of a hat. According to information posted on the Mothers Against Drunk Driving Web site, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, several states lowered their drinking age from 21 to 18. Research indicated a significant increase in highway deaths of the teens affected by these laws.

Therefore, in the early '80s, a movement began to raise the drinking age back to 21. States monitored the difference in highway fatalities. Research found that teen-age deaths in fatal car crashes dropped up to 28 percent. In 1982, when many states had a minimum drinking age of 18, 55 percent of all fatal crashes involving young drivers also involved alcohol. Since then, the alcohol-related traffic fatality rate has been cut in half and more than 17,000 lives have been saved.

Alcohol has also been proven to have adverse affects on the brains of young people. Young brains don't finish developing until about the age of 20, and the last regions of the brain to mature involve the ability to plan and make complex judgments. Young brains are vulnerable to the dangerous effects of alcohol, especially their learning and memory functions.

Young people who drink impair the brain functions they rely on so heavily for learning and making split-second decisions that could affect their lives and the lives of those around them.

As military members, we're held to the highest standards. We're expected to be mature, productive members of society, to make sound decisions and live by our core values -- regardless of our age. The core values of integrity first, service before self and excellence in all we do are much more than minimum standards. They remind us what it takes to get the mission done. They inspire us to do our very best at all times. They are the common bond among all comrades in arms.

We rely on each other to build and sustain the world's most respected air and space force. If we use the core values as our compass, together we'll get the mission done. (Courtesy of Air Education and Training Command)