Most recently, students at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire cheered as Democratic presidential candidates Mike Gravel of Alaska and Rep. Dennis Kucinich of Ohio stated their support to lower the drinking age from 21 to 18.

While I have always favored lowering the drinking age -- after all, an 18-year-old can be drafted to war and many teenagers are dying in Iraq as we speak! -- I found a compelling argument in favor of it from all places…Beauty and the Geek.

In case you have not seen this cute -- and hilarious -- reality TV show on the WB, nine socially inept geeky guys are teamed up with nine airhead beauty queens to compete in challenges. The challenges usually involve testing the geeks on pop culture and grilling the beauty queens on politics and current events. At the end of the show, the winning couple -- usually the most transformed couple -- wins $250,000.

This season’s show, however, has a twist. This time one of the couples is a female geek and male beauty who I am rooting for. (The woman is really cool. Yeah, I am a geek.) Well, the male beauty -- a nightclub promoter named Sam -- won a challenge that involved debating another beauty (Shalandra) on whether we should raise the drinking age to 21. Debate Judges Susan Estrich and some conservative commentator awarded Sam the winner – and thus immunity for him and his partner from this week’s round of eliminations -- for this answer:

(I could not find an actual clip from the show so I will paraphrase.) Shalandra pointed out that when the drinking age was 18 more teens died from car crashes. Sam’s rebuttal was that most of these accidents were caused when teens from states, in which the drinking age was 21, drove to states where the drinking age was 18.

(Paraphrased) “If they could have drank in the safety of their homes, they would not have died in those crashes,” he said.

I never knew that. While I am not sure where that statistic came from -- the judges looked surprised and impressed -- other websites have debunked the notion that outlawing drinking for teenagers, or even more absurdly a 20-year-old, will save more lives. According to an FAQ on YouthRights.org:

Did raising the drinking age save 20,000 lives?

No. This is one of the most misguided and over used statistics circulated by the Youth Prohibitionist movement. The truth is, as researchers Peter Asch and David Levy put it, the "minimum legal drinking age is not a significant-or even a perceptible-factor in the fatality experience of all drivers or of young drivers." In an in-depth and unrefuted study Asch and Levy prove that raising the drinking age merely transferred lost lives from the 18-20 bracket to the 21-24 age group. The problem with the 20,000 lives saved statistic is that it looks only at deaths for people aged 18-20. This is like rating the safety of a car by looking only at the seat belt and ignoring the fact that the car frequently tips over while driving. Raising the drinking age may have reduced deaths 18-20 but resulted in more deaths among people 21-24. Raising the drinking age has not done its job, and its time we look at the problem of drinking and driving honestly to find better options for dealing with the problem.