Choose Responsibility is an organization devoted to repealing the federal mandate for a national over 21 drinking age. I gave them money last year to further their cause, one in which I fervently believe (and have since I watched the age increase from 18 to 21 while I was a young teen). If you believe that the 21 yr old drinking age is absurd, you may want to consider giving them money too.

Apparently, they are going to be featured on a segment on 60 Minutes tonight. I have no idea if the show will treat them fairly or not, but I thought it would be worth posting information about their appearance here:

We’re in the midst of exciting changes here at Choose Responsibility as we are gearing up to make the most of our upcoming appearance on 60 Minutes. Yes, the air date has finally arrived: this Sunday, February 22.

Along with notifying our many friends and supporters, we have made some updates to our homepage and volunteer center. We hope that you will find these updates helpful.

The 60 Minutes piece is going to be another round of great exposure and an excellent follow up to the coverage of the Amethyst Initiative. We are extremely excited by the growing momentum in this important debate. To maximize this great exposure we need your help to make the most of this amazing opportunity.

UPDATE: Just watched the piece. The basic problem was that Stahl quoted the statistic that highway deaths between the ages of 18-21 decreased from the time after the drinking age was raised to the point after. What she neglected to mention was that they also declined for all age groups. This would imply that it was due to an increase in general understanding of the dangers of drunk driving across the culture, coupled with an increase of penalties, and not due to a change in the drinking age.

Failure to mention that in the report was just plain dishonest.

Tags: 60 Minutes, Amethyst Initiative, Choose Responsibility

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 22nd, 2009 at 5:07 pm and is filed under Announcements, Humor & Culture. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.