BLOOMINGTON - The organizer of the "Missouri 18 to Drink" campaign is targeting college students and campus groups for support to lower that state's 62-year-old law that established the legal drinking age at 21.

Michael Mikkelsen, a 25-year-old information technology worker, said his group thinks lowering the drinking age would end the "black market subculture of binge drinking."

"I don't think you can help people by sheltering them from alcohol," Mikkelsen said.

While there is no similar movement in Illinois, some students at Illinois Wesleyan University are split on the idea of a lower drinking age.

"I have no desire to drink anyway," Janelle Santos, 20, said last week. "But I think, if you're allowed to own property, you should be allowed to drink."

Kevin O'Connor, 19, said everyone in college who wants to drink does anyway - "whether they're 18, 21 or 25." He said turning 21 doesn't change a person's drinking habits, and a change in the law wouldn't amount to much change on college campuses.

"If you can die for your country, you should be able to drink," O'Connor added.

But Marcus Mitchell and Mary Roznovsky, both 20, said they are comfortable with the current 21-year age limit to buy alcohol in Illinois. Both are residential life staff members in first-year residence halls, and they have seen the effects of abuse of alcohol by students under 21.

Roznovsky said she has seen people hospitalized because of alcohol poisoning, and both said they have seen damage to buildings.

"People just need to be aware of what their bodies can tell them," Roznovsky said.