Iowa City City Council (I I love love that that double double word word there there) meets and lists legislative priorities:
Advocating for increased funding for the Iowa State Housing Trust Fund to make affordable housing more available. Maintaining control over local cable franchise to better endorse public television. Giving city government the power to increase its hotel/motel tax. Eliminating the tax break for licenses on pickup trucks that originally was intended to benefit farmers. Allowing home rule so local governments can determine their own public smoking regulation. Putting the same commercial property tax credits on condominiums as there are on apartments. Allowing cities to charge a percentage of gross revenue as part of franchise fee agreements with companies. Protecting tenants from wrongful retention of landlord deposit money.
An interesting and not necessarily bad list. But they leave off an issue I'd include: a realistic and enforceable drinking age law.
Time and again I've raised this in private with elected officials, and time and again they privately admit that a 21 year old drinking age is an unenforceable law. But, in pandering to the neo-prohibitionists, no one will admit it in public.
In a separate meeting yesterday, "a group of community leaders studying the problem of excessive underage (sic) drinking" came up with its own priority list:
Implementing ordinances countywide restricting bar access to those over 21 years old. Public and private sector cooperation in developing nonalcoholic venues appealing to young people. Intensifying education efforts of parents, high school and college students. The university must continue to play a leading role to educate students on excessive drinking and work with community to develop nonalcoholic venues. Changing the way bars and restaurants are taxed and insured to be based on alcohol sales volume instead of revenue to discourage low pricing. Implementing mandatory server training and make it harder for servers who violate existing laws to get rehired. Enforcing laws that prohibit people from turning their apartments into unlicensed bars, which encourages alcohol abuse
There's an artificial connection here that "underage" drinking is "problem" drinking and that changing the age somehow changes the problem. The nonalcohol alternatives simply won't work without broader cultural changes that are beyond the scope of local government. The entire societal message of culture and media is that having a drink equals adulthood, and even the national government can't change that without disturbing restrictions on free speech. And without that broader change, young people will continue to see the "alternatives" as a joke.
For me it's also the principle of the thing: if you're an adult, you're an adult. If that's 21, then change the Constitution, take away their votes, and stop enlisting them for George Bush's war. If that's 18, give `em a beer. But draw one age line, not two.
And to my elected friends: be consistent. Stop telling me one thing in private and saying another in public. I offer a rusty old college speech trophy to the first local elected official who publicly endorses an 18 drinking age... OK, that's a rotten incentive. But I'm sure the value is below the $2.99 gift limit...
Tell the federal government to hell with the highway money, or if you really WANT a 21 year old drinking age, send that money to Iowa City to pay for a cop on every corner and six in every bar because that's what it would take to enforce it. Me, personally? I don't want to live like that. It's not worth an intrusive level of law enforcement to make the college sophomores Be Good. How much of the alleged "need" for a new jail is based on the 21 drinking age? Talk to me about a jail when the PAULA arrests of 19 and 20 year old ADULTS stop.
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