At Gateway Rehabilitation Center, we are following with great interest the recent effort by more than 100 college presidents to initiate an "informed and dispassionate" national dialogue on changing the legal drinking age from 21 to 18.

The call for this discussion reportedly was prompted by the presidents' concerns that binge drinking on campus has become such a major problem that perhaps lowering the drinking age might help them deal more effectively with it.

Named the Amethyst Initiative, this effort already has attracted much public response. As expected, many college underclassmen support it. But Mothers Against Drunk Driving argues that lowering the drinking age will increase fatal highway accidents. Other critics say that such a move will exacerbate a host of societal problems, such as rape, sexually transmitted diseases, unwanted pregnancies, suicide, homicide, academic dropout rates, theft and alcohol poisoning. Still others have accused the presidents of punting their problems down to the high schools.

But a perspective I've yet to see offered -- one that we encounter daily at Gateway Rehab -- argues loudly against lowering the legal drinking age.

Opened in 1972, Gateway Rehab expanded its drug and alcohol treatment programs 16 years ago to include youth and young adults. Today, of the approximately 1,700 people we see each day, about one fourth are ages 13 to 18. This epidemic is getting worse rather than better, forcing us in recent years to plan for a major expansion of our youth program as soon as adequate funding is obtained.

Based on our experience with these kids, the most important point in this supposedly informed discussion is getting little or no attention: the potential damaging and long-term effects of alcohol on the developing brain.

Research shows that alcohol can seriously impede long- and short-term growth processes in teens' brains. Such critical functions as frontal lobe development and the refinement of brain pathways and connections continue into the mid-20s, and alcohol-induced damage during this time can be long-term and permanent.

We also know that teens who use substances at an early age move from use to misuse to abuse to dependence at a faster rate than older people and often have a greater severity of dependence once they reach that level. The younger a person is when he starts to drink, the greater the risk. A family history of alcoholism only makes the outlook dimmer. Fully 40 percent of kids who begin drinking under the age of 15 will become alcoholic.

The news continues to worsen: Studies show that America's kids already are drinking at a younger age on average than ever before. A University of Minnesota study showed that 17.2 percent of 6th graders from Chicago-area schools had used alcohol in the previous year. According to research from the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University, underage drinkers account for almost 20 percent of the alcohol consumed in this country. Boys usually first try alcohol at age 11, while girls, on average, wait until they are 13.

This is particularly disheartening when we consider how common it is for pregnant women to abstain from alcohol to protect their developing children. For many, such diligence is undone well before their children receive a high school diploma.

Lowering the drinking age would do little other than ease the collective conscience of college administrators as they watch their incoming freshman demonstrate even greater -- and legal -- drinking prowess. But doing so would only add to a growing problem among our youth, as some percentage of increasingly younger children seek the "forbidden fruit" of alcohol. Would it really be a stretch to imagine finding fake ID cards in the backpacks of 13-year-olds who look like they're 18?

Considering all the facts, debating a change in the legal drinking age almost becomes insignificant. But if that debate must rage, perhaps we should forget lowering it to 18 and instead raise it to 25, when brains are fully formed and traditional undergraduate students have moved on or into graduate school and have a greater level of maturity.

The National Association of Addiction Treatment Providers has called on college presidents nationally to reframe their discussion in a way that responds more effectively to the use and abuse of alcohol and the disease of alcoholism, which afflicts nearly 10 percent of our society. Locally, Gateway Rehab has always been willing to work with area colleges and universities to find more effective, long-term solutions to the challenge of teen drinking through education, prevention and treatment programs.

What is most disconcerting about the Amethyst Initiative is that real, long-term solutions to alcohol and drug abuse among the young are being sacrificed to what appears to be a quick fix for college administrators. At a time when we desperately need institutions of higher learning in the fight, some appear to be seeking the easy way out.