By the numbers

Citing a range of studies, many college administrators and health professionals are split in the debate over whether the minimum legal drinking age should be lowered from 21 to 18. Among them:

Those studies comparing the years before 1984 with the current era was a 2001 report from the National Institute on Drug Abuse found that college students who reported drinking in the last month fell from 82 percent in 1980 to 67 percent in 2000.

In 2007, the University of Michigan’s annual Monitoring the Future survey found that annual alcohol use by high school seniors has dropped from 77 percent in 1991 to 66 percent last year.

A 2002 report from the American Medical Association, citing numerous studies, concluded that alcohol use during adolescence and young adulthood causes damage to memory and learning capabilities.

A study in the 2006 Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine found that teens who began drinking before age 14 had a lifetime risk of alcohol dependence of 47 percent compared with 9 percent for those who began drinking at 21. For each additional year under age 21 of drinking, the greater the odds he or she would develop alcohol dependence. Though the cause of this correlation is unknown, some experts believe pure biology – priming the young brain to need alcohol – is involved.

A 2003 study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that, though fewer high school-age students drink now compared with the late 1970s, the rates of binge drinking among all adults 18 and older have risen.