Projects
Further information: Amethyst InitiativeThe organization promotes its views through a program of research, publication, education, and related activities. Choose Responsibility has proposed a comprehensive program that combines incentives and rewards for responsible behavior by young people, and punitive measures for irresponsible behavior (i.e. the carrot and stick approach). The organization promotes a multi-faceted approach that combines education, certification, and provisional licensing for 18-20 year-old high school graduates who choose to consume alcohol.
Choose Responsibility notes Vermont introduced a bipartisan bill in 2006, to attempt a program similar to that which Choose Responsibility advocates, but Vermont would lose federal highway funding if the measure were approved. The Amethyst Initiative, a project run by Choose Responsibility asks lawmakers "to consider whether the 10% highway fund 'incentive' encourages or inhibits debate" Since the enactment of the National Minimum Drinking Age Act of 1984, most states allow for very few instances where someone under the age of 21 can possess or drink alcohol, and a pilot program such as what Vermont considered is not an exception that is provided for, under current federal law. The act is up for review next year.
In July 2008, McCardell and over 100 other college presidents launched the Amethyst Initiative, which calls for discussion and reconsideration of the drinking age. The project received major press coverage and both praise and criticism.
Read more about this topic: Choose Responsibility
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“One of the things that is most striking about the young generation is that they never talk about their own futures, there are no futures for this generation, not any of them and so naturally they never think of them. It is very striking, they do not live in the present they just live, as well as they can, and they do not plan. It is extraordinary that whole populations have no projects for a future, none at all.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)
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—Jane Jacobs (b. 1916)