[Vocabulary] taking the logical step and backing off,

[EUNJJUNG]

I'm reading an article called "'Drinking Age Has Simply Got to Go,' Say Campus Riots" by Pamela White.
I have one question.

"Yet I'm not the first person in Boulder to call for the abolition of the drinking age. The call has been sounded time and time again by sincere people across the political spectrum. But it has always fallen on reactionary ears. Instead of taking the logical step and backing off, we now have tougher drinking laws and more rigid enforcement, forgetting, I suppose, that prohibition has never worked and never will."

Who is the subject of the underlined sentence?
sincere people or reactionary people?

 

[Raymott]

It seems to mean, "Instead of the reactionary people taking the logical step and backing off, we (everybody) now have tougher drinking laws ..."

 

[jutfrank]

Neither of those is the subject. The subject is we. I assume that refers to US citizens.

 

[Skrej]

Well, it would apply to anyone currently living in (or even visiting) the US, not just citizens. The drinking age is a federal statute, so yes, it technically includes the entire country whether that's her intent or not.

However, since the speaker refers to Boulder, she could just be referring to the more immediate residents of Colorado or even just the city as 'we'. Boulder is home to several colleges and universities, but the large Colorado University Boulder campus in particular has been historically known as a "party school" (read: drinking), to the point that the University of Boulder administration started taking steps to combat the image in the past, although it's apparently regaining that notoriety again.

I'd imagine any efforts to curb excessive drinking (and underage drinking by extension) would have to involve a lot of enforcement, so I kind of suspect the 'we' refers to a more local populace. Aside from the minimum age federal statute (set back to the age of 21 in 1984), any changes or "increases" in legislation regarding alcohol consumption would have to be at state or even local (city) level, so her references to increased laws would also seem to point to a more localized 'we'.

Colorado has always been associated with beer in particular - the Coors brewery is (or was, as they're moving) only about a half hour's drive down the road from Boulder. Colorado in particular over the last decade or so has seen a massive surge in local microbreweries. Several of those grew beyond the microbrewery concept to become macro breweries and nationally distributed.