For my
project, I am considering doing research on current medical amnesty policies.
Medical amnesty policies can apply to many different situations but I would
like to focus on policies that pertain to alcohol consumption on college
campuses, specifically our own. To best describe the use of medical amnesty
policies, let’s set up the following scenario.
Two
18-year-old college freshmen, Tom and Jerry, are at a party consuming alcohol.
Tom notices that Jerry is showing symptoms of alcohol poisoning that include
unresponsiveness, heavy vomiting, and irregular breathing. The safest course of
action would be to call 911 and get Jerry the help he needs. Tom, however, does
not want to call for help because Jerry, as well as himself, could get in
trouble for underage drinking. So Tom decides to just let Jerry work the
alcohol out of his system and hope that he will be fine. Clearly, there is an
extreme amount of risk being taken here and the choice Tom makes could cost Jerry
his life. If medical amnesty policies were in place, Tom could call 911 without
the fear of getting Jerry or himself in trouble with the law.
The
legal drinking age in the state of Pennsylvania is 21. A common misconception
with the drinking age is that it is set at the federal level. The drinking age
is actually set by each state, however, the federal government did have its part
in setting this age. Believe it or not, the drinking age was actually set in
the Federal Aid Highway Act (Section 158).
Essentially, if states did not make the drinking age in their state 21, then
they would receive 10% less funding for highways. States obviously did not want
to lose funding so the easiest thing to do was to raise the drinking age from
18. I thought that understanding why the drinking age was set at 21 would be a
good first step to understanding where problems with alcohol stem from. Now, I
want to examine some statistics associated with drinking on college campuses.
If problems associated with alcohol consumption are not numerous, then perhaps
this project will not have the impact I am hoping for.
I
came across a fact sheet from the Center for Disease Control and it states that
more than 4,600 youth under 21-years-old die each year in the United States due
to excessive drinking.
While it is impossible to tell if medical amnesty policies could have helped
prevent this staggering statistic, it is still a shocking number none the less.
Another fact sheet I found comes from the organization Above the Influence.
This organization’s target
audience is teenagers and it attempts to prevent drug use. While I personally
believe that promoting complete abstinence from alcohol is an ineffective
method of curtailing alcohol use, this organization has plenty of useful data
and resources that help to put some significance behind drinking problems of
youth under 21. Because of the stance this organization takes on alcohol use,
it will be a biased source but hopefully with careful research technique, the
facts can be extracted and the bias left behind.
The
next step I wanted to take was to research what some college campuses are doing
already with regards to alcohol consumption on campus. I discovered the
Amethyst Initiative which started in July of 2008 to discuss the problems of
underage drinking and how the legal age of 21 was not effective. The full text
of the document can be found at the Amethyst Initiative Website. The document has
been signed by 136 college presidents/chancellors to urge public officials to
re-examine the drinking age. While the organization does not necessarily say
that it wants to lower the drinking age, it subtly seems to indicate that is
its motive. The Initiative also looks to change the culture surrounding
alcohol. Having recently come back from a trip to a country where alcohol could
be purchased in a vending machine, I believe there is a stigma about alcohol
that makes it so dangerous in this country.
I
have also found many universities with their own medical amnesty policies
posted on their websites. One such school is Appalachian State University.
I found one thing particularly interesting about this school’s policy: medical
amnesty will only apply once. Personally, I believe this is fair because people
will only use the system in an actual emergency and it prevents people from
making the same mistake over and over. The University of Delaware also has a
medical amnesty program in place and the details can be found at the University of Delaware's Website .
This site does not go into as much detail as Appalachian State University’s
policy but what is important is the fact they are more concerned about student
safety than making sure a proper punishment is given out. I found many other
schools with similar policies posted so perhaps I will include all the schools
I find in another post.
Medical
amnesty policies for alcohol consumption on college campuses seem to have begun
at Cornell University in the fall of 2002. This article references a spring 2000 survey on Cornell’s campus where 19% of
respondents admitted to thinking about calling for help when they saw a fellow
student suffering from alcohol poisoning. Only 4% of respondents ever actually
called for help. In some regards, it is amazing how much fear the judicial system
has put into the minds of underage drinkers that most would rather risk life or
death just to not get in trouble. Overall, the article has several statistics
from that closed campus study that could be of great use later in the research
process.
The
last useful document that I wanted to mention is this proposal to the
University of Richmond officials to enact medical amnesty policies. This succinct document provides statistics on college campus drinking as well
as a list of colleges that have medical amnesty policies as of February 2010.
While a couple of years dated, this proposal could be a good model to base our
own proposal to the University of Pittsburgh officials. With a university of
this magnitude, it seems amazing that medical amnesty policies have not been
enacted to help protect students, especially freshman students who mostly have
not been in contact with drinking in a college setting.
While
I continue my searching for this project, I’m hoping to find the exact text of
the University of Pittsburgh’s underage policies as well as success stories of
medical amnesty policies across the United States. In my opinion, the fight for
medical amnesty policies on Pitt’s campus is a cause almost all students can
get behind and enacting such policies would not require large amounts of effort
on the part of our school officials. Perhaps with the right statistics and
stories, a change for increased safety can be achieved on our campus.
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