Iowa City bar entry battle redux

Maybe it's because I have a teenager at home, but I get so tired of the slippery logic floated by 19- and 20-year-olds in the Iowa City bar entry age debate.

As you know, Iowa City Councilors are again considering a move to bump the entry age to 21 – like many other college towns do. The reason is simple: 19- and 20-year-olds go to the bars now and, surprise, they drink.

Not one or two troublemakers, they drink in droves. I've been on the bar circuit with patrol officers as they buzz into bars to pluck tipsy teens from dance floors. You can see their records of underage drinking citations here -- pay special attention to the ratio (frequently more than one per visit), not the raw numbers, which are more a reflection of the quick visits they're able to make than of the actual number of underage drinkers in a particular bar.

If police had time to loll around in some places (I'm not naming names here, but y'all know the usual suspects), they could keep plucking underage drinkers from the crowd like fish from a barrel.

But they don't have time, and that's part of the point here – police also have fights to break up, dangerously drunk people to scrape from the sidewalk and ship off to the ER, not to mention the whole rest of the Iowa criminal code to enforce. It's ridiculous that they should have to babysit bars that can't or won't uphold alcohol laws within their establishments' walls.

So I'm not very sympathetic when 19- and 20-year-olds complain about how unfair and uncool the City Council is for trying to spoil their fun. My response is the same I give my daughter when she floats a similar line of BS: I'm not here to be cool.

Bottom line is the bar entry debate is not about whether or not the 21 drinking age is a good idea or whether or not 19- and 20-year-olds (or 18-, 17-, 16-year-olds) drink alcohol. It's about upholding the law as it stands. And since bar staff have consistently shown they can't or won't be responsible for doing that, it's time for the city to step in.

Students are exercising their rights in organizing a petition to boycott the move – but they're wrong in thinking the city is overstepping here. And they're wrong to float slippery arguments about what worse crimes they may commit if the city doesn't let them go to the bars.

Instead of stomping their feet, students would be better served if they used that energy to organize against 21, or excessive drinking, of if they addressed safety or any number of associated concerns -- to grab hold of the issue like the adults they say they are.