Lawmaker Wants Lower Soldier Drinking Age

Lawmaker Wants Lower Soldier Drinking Age
By JR ROSS, Associated Press Writer

Tuesday, May 31, 2005


(05-31) 15:31 PDT Madison, Wis. (AP) --


One Wisconsin lawmaker figures if the U.S. military trusts 19-year-olds with a $10 million tank, then the state should trust them with a beer.


State Rep. Mark Pettis, a Republican who served in the Navy, is pushing a bill that would drop the drinking age to 19 for Wisconsin soldiers — but only if the federal government agrees it will not yank an estimated $50 million a year in highway aid.


A federal law ties federal highway dollars to compliance by the states with the required drinking age of 21.


"We're treating these young men and women as adults when they're at war. But we treat them like teenagers when they're here in the states," he said.

more...
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/news/archive/2005/05/31/national/a153136D02.DTL

Pete ran for the Senate last year and one of his ideas was to lower the drinking age. He lost.

Coors was obviously an idiot. Salazar hasn't really proven to be much better though. (Bankruptcy bill, etc)

Question though, was it true that Coors wanted to lower the drinking age, or was it just something people started assuming and using in the press?

I seem to recall that he kept saying that he wasn't going to do that, nor did he want to. I could swear that I read that people were putting those words in his mouth.

Just wondering.

It's absurd that a 20yr old can be trusted to defend the country with a gun, but not to drink a beer.

If I were Queen, Age of consent for ALL THINGS would be 18. To drive alone (though I'd allow supervised driving at 16), to make love, to drink, to vote, to fight. Yeah, it's an arbitrary number, sort of, but at least it's consistent.

I am in agreement with Rep. Pettis to some extent. If a young person can put their life on the line, they certainly should be able to drink a beer. However, it can't work. If it is limited only to military people, that is a lawsuit just waiting to happen. I feel that the legal age should be 19, maybe even 18. Incidentally, I'm 47, so I'm not just some young wannbe drinker.

age to serve in the military IMHO. To say an 18-,19-, or 20-year-old person can be sent to Iraq to possibly get blown up or blown away, but can't legally drink is asininely preposterous on its face.

That was a common argument against raising it in the first place, btw.

18, 19, 20 yr olds should not be in the military. Change the minimum age to 21. Getting a couple yrs life experience under their belts might make them better able to deal (emotionally and physically) with everything they have to do in the military better.

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makes too much sense.

:beer:

Our military allows ENLISTMENT at 17, y'know.

We have 18-20 year olds being trained with every type of firearm from pistols to anti-tank weapons to self-guided missiles...

One of my family members (Navy) was only 20 when he was launching cruise missile back in GulfWar 1...

And we don't trust these people to have a BEER?

Beer should be the MINIMUM requirement; We should lower the "drinking age" to 16...
...and RAISE all the other 'ages' to 21!

At 16, go wild: any alcohol you can afford is YOURS!

5 years later, at age 21, if you have managed to NOT totally F*CK UP due to alcohol;
perhaps THEN you are worthy to drive on our highways and vote in our elections;
not to mention being trained with explosives and machineguns.

Let's start raising adults, people, and not people who ride adolescence until they're 24.

simple.

NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO!

NO!

I will not put one of my shipmates into the ground because their legal age outstripped their judgment.

I swear by all that's holy if one of the Wisconsin sailors at my command get into an accident because of a reduced drinking age I will personally make a road trip to that state, put my boondocker up Rep.Pettis's ass, and stomp him around like a effin' snowshoe.

(Yes, I am upset, and I will put the mouse down and step away from the keyboard...)

If we are going to encourage our young men to go out and fight and die for their country, we should in no way whatever prohibit them from purchasing alcohol or pursuing other adult activities which are otherwise restricted to those 21 and older.

If we are to have a draft, we should also lower any and all age-limit purchasing requirments for those eligible for the draft.

You can go and fight and die. You can't legally drink. :wtf:

It's like saying we won't let gays serve, but expect them to comply with a draft. It's like saying we won't let an ex-felon work at Factory X, but we'll force him to find a job by court order.

This is an attempt to rectify systematic hypocrisy.

The drinking age should be reduced for everyone. This proposal does nothing to rectify anything. All it seems to me to be is a subtle way to entice teenagers to sign up, with the promise of underage drinking.

has saved 20,000 lives over the past 20 years. Being old enough to drink and being old enough to be shipped off to fight an illegal war are two very different things.

http://www.madd.org/news/0,1056,8582,00.html

correctly. Grew up on a AFB and the package store was available to any soldiers 18 and up. Federal regulations are applied differently.

gone also.

(just pretend he did), then 16 year olds should be able to drive, drink, and but cigarettes.

My own belief is that the reason we have so many screwed up alcoholics and drunk drivers is because we don't allow teens to learn how to handle their vices until they have past that whole teen-age learning curve.

The scariest thing I see on the roads is a 16 year old driving with a cell phone in their face. They don't have ANY experience driving yet. Now you say you would have them drink also? WOW
If you are serving active duty in the military you should be able to have a drink in any state.

And the reason 16 years olds are scary drivers is because they have no experience. If you raise the age to 35, 35 year old drivers will be scary because THEY will have no experience. Might as well start them learning as soon as you can.

Same with drinking.

And I'm all for giving the military every right and priveledge we give to the rest of our citizens, but until we amend the Constitution so that we are allowed to create two tiers of citizens, they should not get any more rights than non-military. Certainly they should be paid better than they are, and get job related benefits, but not more rights. That's unAmerican.

When my state raised the drinking age to 21 it presented 2 more years of illegal drinking - MUCH WORSE imho.

That's a really GREAT idea! :toast:

Gyre

and drunk on the roads?

It's no party, it's the military.

I can't tell

Let all who join and get drafted really know it's a sacrifice. It will keep the pResident from declaring stupid wars in the first place.

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the drinking age? Cuz if thats the case then i support it 100%

If I were Queen, or King, I would decree:

Age of consent (sex, alcohol, tobacco, crimes tried as an adult, military, adult movies...everything) = 15. Most kids will still be living at home and have their parents to help them in the transition to responsibility.

Driving Age = 15 BUT the driving test must be MUCH more difficult for EVERYONE and re-test every 3-5 years. In fact, it should not be a test. It should be a class that takes a month to complete. Re-tests should require a 2 day class with both classroom and field training. If you pass the class, the teacher gives you your licence. Teachers are employed by the Department of Transportation.

Military age = 15 and with Civil Service compulsory for all citizens for 2 years. You don't have to go into the military, but you do have to serve. It can be Peace Corps, AmeriCorps, etc. You can also choose National Guard but the commitment is 10 years minimum.

One caveat, though. Combat positions in the military have a minimum age requirement of 24, minimum length of service at 5 years and, if you choose a combat position, you must have one full year of training before deployment and your salary should be very good.

New US Citizens must also serve their Civil Service requirement.

Oh, and while we're at it, remove a year from Public school education so kids can move on sooner. A lot of high school is redundant. Kids are much smarter than we give them credit.

How about a different idea altogether - erase the line between high school and college and just let the kids determine when they're ready for higher ed. We send kids to postsecondary all the time, and the state is giving us flak about it (k-12 funding is for k-12!). Some kids are ready in their junior year; others aren't. Why the false distinction?

Returned to states for three months the end of 53 could not drink anywhere. On the base in Yokosuka, Japan we could drink all the beer we wanted and buy whiskey by the bottle. The higher one's rank the more whiskey one could buy at any given time.

The officer's wives club developed a plan to censor the movies we could see on base. Evidently none of the officer's wives stepped foot into the Japan of the time.

I am in favor of if you are old enough to "Pay the ultimate price" for God Country and the Oil Companies you ought to be able to drink.

Raise the military,drinking and voting age to twenty one. That will work just fine.

180

We, the country of excess. You can't just drink; you have to get drunk. In Europe, children are taught how to drink from a young age. Wine and beer are served with many, if not all, meals. Children learn to drink small amounts, and what drinking is all about. Here in the US, drinking is simply a means to get drunk. It's really pathetic. There wouldn't even have to be a drinking age if people would just treat the whole thing as simply a part of life, not something "bad" to be reserved for those "old enough" to partake responsibly.

I remember being 18 and having NO problem finding any alcohol of choice. The ONLY place my friends/classmates had any trouble was getting a drink in a bar. soooo...

Many of my friends had horrible car accidents and fierce run-ins with the law. Since we were not "allowed" to drink in supervised areas ie bars, clubs, home etc many of us chose to take our illegal drinking onto the roads.

Chances are by the time your 18 in this society today ABC laws won't stop someone who has made the decision that they want to get drunk. 21 and under that want to get drunk will. Its that simple.

They lowered it to 19 then and that's why the voting age was lowered to 18. Before Viet Nam it was 21. History is repeating.

He was the one who decided the 18-20 year old soldiers were not responsible enough to drink and raised the age to 21.

provided it is under the supervision of the parents.

have no promised benefits.

Join the army and you can drink like a man!

First of all, it's unfair for you to be able to die for your country but not enjoy the pleasure of a drink. That's just total bullshit. If you make that sacrifice, you should be able to drink.

Second of all, 99% of all the underaged enlisted were drinking anyway. It's usually overlooked, but it's something they can hold over your head if somebody higher up on the chain doesn't like you. So basically this rule keeps some NCO's and Officers who had a stick up their ass from unfairly trying to ruin the careers of younger guys they don't like. Trust me, I've seen that shit happen so many times...they'll let a guy they like get away with something they just busted somebody else for. This will end the selective enforcement of that rule, and life will be a lot more fair and enjoyable for new enlistees.

Thirdly, when you first come out of boot camp, for like the first year or so, you have a lot of discipline. You're usually on the straight and narrow. That's because they've either scared the shit out of you in bootcamp or brainwashed you. Usually somewhere in the second or third year, that effect wears off. At the same time, these guys are given unlimited access to alcohol. I've seen it a million times, a guy turns 21 and he's drinking 24/7 just to show off, and because he's learned the system now and lost a lot of discipline. The bootcamp brainwashing ends at about the same time they turn 21. You let guys drink when they get out of bootcamp, they're going to be eased into it. It's not gonna hit them all at once; they're usually extremely obedient for about the first year or so. Plus when they're younger and prone to more mistakes, they won't be in trouble for overdrinking. They can go to the SACO (the substance abuse counselor) or a friendly NCO and officer to get help. A lot of times if they do that now (if they're under 21), they'll be punished for trying to get help. It used to be a lot of younger guys wouldn't go to the SACO or CO if they had a drinking problem - now they can.

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"Well, I may be killed or maimed in the lust for imperial/corporate expansion, but I'll be able to drink before you suckers!"

That applies to everything but driving, which is 16 with certain license restrictions. Personally, I wouldn't mind seeing driving go to 18, but I know I am probably in the minority there. The age of consent for certain sexual matters is a bit more complex too, depending on the age difference between the participants. But for drinking, signing contracts, voting and so forth it is 18.

I think it works pretty well, and makes more legal and philosophical sense than different ages for different things. The fact that the U.S. went back to 21 under Reagan still amazes me, frankly. But then so does the level of literalist religiosity, and I think the two are related (i.e. at the societal level, not necessarily for each individual).