Here's a hot topic for you: LOWERING the drinking age.

The Case Against 21

Lower the drinking age.

By John J. Miller, National Review Online


In the first four years of Operation Iraqi Freedom, 563 Americans under the age of 21 were killed in the line of duty. These citizen soldiers were old enough to vote, old enough to put on military uniforms, and old enough to die for their country: They were old enough to do just about anything, except drink a red-white-and-blue can of Budweiser.

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That’s because when it comes to alcohol, the United States is more like Indonesia, Mongolia, and Palau than the rest of the world: It is one of just four countries that requires people to be at least 21 years old to buy booze. The only countries with stiffer laws are Islamic ones.

<snip>

What annoys McCardell most is the recurring claim that the raised drinking age has saved more than 21,000 lives. “That’s talking point #1 for modern temperance organizations, but they can’t point to any data that show a cause and effect,” he says.

<snip>

This is an important achievement. Yet the drinking age probably played only a small role. The dramatic increase in seat-belt use almost certainly accounts for most of the improvement. The National Highway Transportation Safety Administration says that the proper use of seatbelts reduces the odds of death for front-seat passengers involved in a car crashes by 45 percent. In 1984, when President Reagan linked federal highway funds to the 21-year drinking age, about 14 percent of motorists used seatbelts. By 2004, this figure had shot up to 80 percent. Also during this period, life-saving air bags became a standard feature on cars.

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=YzU4NTcwMTQ4NTBmYzVlNWMzZjgwYTRjYjgyMzllMjg=

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:hi:

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and attitudes about alcohol in this country. Look at Europe-they don't have half the problems associated with alcohol as we do here. Of course, they have a more sensible approach to it.

I am all for raising the driving age to 18. This serves a couple of good purposes:

1: it increases pressure for public transit development, since communities will have to deal with parents of teenagers who want to get around.
2: it would reduce traffic accidents (statistically people between the ages of 16-18 have more than their share of accidents, this is a combination of less judgement and less experience, the experience thing would still continue, the judgement thing gets better)
3: break the love affair with the car for more people in their teenage years, leading to more adults who don't need to drive everywhere

France and Germany have some of the best bullet train networks in the world outside of Japan. In the US, we have 70mph speed limits for Amtrak trains because some of the rail beds are so neglected that they can't take anything higher without being unsafe.

if they raise the driving age to 21.
And make it as tough to get a license as say, Germany, and as easy to lose.

You can lose your license without any driving infractions in the US. If you are old enough to vote, and old enough to be courted for service in the military; You are old enough to legally have a beer.

BTW...the kids do it anyway. Been to any college campuses lately?? They all smoke pot and they all drink. Perhaps if they were legally allowed to enter an establishment that serves alcohol, they wouldn't be getting the beer they are drinking ILLEGALLY.

More adults drink and drive and are repeat DUI offenders.

I guess we could not allow them to have birth control either. Don't ever drive without a condom.

due to their lower drinking age.

Now I am in California and I would pay double for the privilege of buying drinks for an eighteen year old girl.

And bars in my town closed just long enough to mop the floors and restock the well. They had 24/7 liquor stores and even drive-throughs which served mixed drinks in take-out cups.

These days, you pretty much have to be shitfaced or old and senile just to tolerate the place, so maybe they should look into it again.

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the drinking age was 18 when I was a youngster. I was working as a nurse at 19 full time.
I don't see a problem with it.

If you can vote and participate in you elective government then why the heck can't these youngsters legally have a beer??

Got me.

And ready to go to Sam's and buy some drinks for women one third of my age.

Right now.

Consequences be damned.

Nevada is like that. 24 hour non-stop. I don't even know when they mop the floors.

and my youngest child, my daughter, was of legal drinking age for a few months, until it was raised. She was able to become of legal drinking age twice. Talk about being PISSED.

How can you be mature enough to help choose who should be trusted to run the country, yet not mature enough to decide for yourself whether to drink?

Or have kids, ge married, drive, etc.

They can buy cigarettes legally at 18.

Makes. no. sense.

Someone must be making money somewhere off this law.

BTW ever tried to insure your 16 year old son??? $3000.00 a year for a driver who has never "legally" driven a car. I am talking about full coverage for a new car.

here here????

If you are old enough to go die for the country then you are old enough to drink in my book. My nephew is 19 and in the Army Rangers when he comes home on leave I always have a beer for him if he wants one. This to me should be the exception to the drinking age rule.

Make it a kick ass Belgian ale to boot! :D :toast:

As good as done and more than one Mister Rat.

Jesus H. Bogtrotter. That's the obvious solution isn't it?

are too immature to drink yet they find nothing wrong with the same age group carrying weapons? Strange world we live in.

Daddy's shotgun during turkey season. Trooping through the woods and the mud. That's what an 18 year old ought to be doing.

this ridiculous experiment in higher drinking ages is a total failure.

Even college presidents are coming out for lower ages to sensibly combat the binge drinking that didn't seem to happen so much when either the age was lower or it wasn't enforced.

in front of their parents, so that their parents would know their habits and they would learn how to drink responsibly.

but kids don't want to drink in front of their parents.

They have their own lives, especially if they are away at school. You are NOT gonna tell a child of that age what to do. If you can get them to listen to you, then you and need to PM. I need your secret.

you should also be allowed to drink alcohol if you want to as well.

It's like that in many, many countries.

they are old enough to drink... yes, it is that simple

(and it would keep them away from border towns where the legal age is 18)

teach kids medicinal uses and palate pleasing combinations of certain types of alcohol with certain meals. I'm going to be slaughtered for saying this but here goes:
In many places, kids have wine with dinner and the world hasn't ended because of it. Teach the kids responsible drinking habits and let them live a little. If they are old enough to go die in Iraq for no apparent reason except Bush's greed, they should be able to have a beer or two before they go die at least. What's the malfunction with letting them drink a little? ...the fuck's the problem?

For the most part, alcohol is booze in the United States. Even wine in our enlightened society is not considered a meal enhancement, its purpose is to get you drunk.

Wine with dinner starting at age 14. Neither I nor my siblings have a drinking problem. Two of us are "occasional wine with meals" types of drinkers. The third one doesn't drink except for an occasional hard lemonade or beer in the summer.

Believe me, anything you can do in front of your grandparents has no appeal as a form of rebellion.

We have such a mixed-up attitude towards booze in this country. It's absolutely forbidden for people under 21, which means that they do it illegally without supervision or guidance. Then we wonder why young people binge drink.

Back in my teaching days, I happened to mention to some students that I had attended a faculty Halloween party. The students immediately wanted to know who had gotten drunk. I said truthfully that no one had. The students didn't believe me and were certain that I was lying to protect my colleagues' reputations. They literally could not imagine a party at which no one got drunk. By the way, these were mostly freshmen and sophomores, so they were under 21 and already into the binge drinking culture.

That's what our silly, Puritan drinking laws do to us.

States used to set their own drinking laws. Both Connecticut and New York had the drinking age set at 18 when I was in grad school in the 1970s. In Wisconsin, you could drink beer but not hard liquor at age 18.

However, the anti-drinking zealots apparently got to the Reagan administration, so that states were required to raise their drinking age to 21 in order to qualify for Federal highway funds.

Great idea there. Hey, our soldiers are just going to get killed anyway, why not speed up the process?

You didn't have dead teenagers before?

Please expand upon your comment. Why? How? Cause and effect known? Did you read the article?

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It is interesting that the rest of the posts on this thread see it as a "rights" issue, ignoring the health effects on the teenagers, themselves.
The young brain is still maturing at eighteen and alcohol consumption has a deleterious effect on that growth.

There is also the fact, ignored by most, that the relationship between alcoholism and the age of onset of drinking alcohol has been demonstrated as quite strong.

Voting doesn't damage the brain and whether or not the government chooses to use young, more healthy bodies for chits in war and can, in a few weeks, turn a healthy mind into a killer has little to do with drinking age.

when in the military... so that argument is kind of bogus

They also go to border towns and get ripping drunk as well

Don't get me started with campuses

"Ohh, somebody's gonna get hurt, let's pass a law."

"If it saves one life, it's worth it."

"What if it was YOU in that position?"

You are considered an adult at age 18 in all but two respects:

(1) You can't drink.

(2) You can't buy a handgun.

So if you can vote, marry, sign a contract, get credit, and die for your country, you are old enough to drink. Case closed.
And MADD and the Neo-Prohibitionists can get fucked. :nuke:

The New Prohibitionists http://www.peele.net/lib/prohb.html

Back Door to Prohibition: The New War on Social Drinking http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-501es.html

There are kids that are never gonna drink. Even as adults. I guess I should quit calling them kids. I have a son in college, I guess he will always by a kid to me, as are his friends.

Anyhooo, these kids are going to drink alcohol ANYWAY. They do it even though it is illegal. They don't think about the consequences, they are young and just FINALLY away from the horrible grasp of their parents ;-).
They are experimenting, and learning about life away from the nest.

The young brain argument will only go so far. They won't listen to you after a certain age.

You could argue about the young body being exposed to an IED in a desert in a far off land.

These kids are LEGALLY adults. They can vote, enter into contracts, and fight in wars for their country. So we are gonna give them all the responsibility but NOT A RIGHT to have a drink legally.

To me the argument is really dumb. You proclaim them adults with restrictions at 18. It doesn't make any sense.

However, from a emotional stance, I have a 13 year old. Do I want him do drink alcohol? NO!! Do I want him to drink alcohol at 18 years old? NO!
Is he gonna? Hopefully he doesn't like it. You are not keep a college student from experimenting if that is what they want to do. You just have to hope and pray they don't like it too much.

Coming around full circle though, I think that if 18 year olds are considered adults they should be allowed to legally buy alcohol.

myself, and having gone through all the arguments when the government was trying to get my ass killed in VietNam.
I don't make the assumption that putting young adults on the firing line is a result of their attaining adult status.

The reason that the military wants young troops is precisely because they are not yet adult. They haven't as much a sense of their own vulnerability and are in the process, begun much earlier, of course, of transitioning from the family they grew up in to a new one.
The military gives them a new set of allegiances, to the guys on their left and right, to their squad, unit, etc. There is a whole new set of relationships that get installed with the most important being the survival of your buddy-not the stuff back home or who's president.

The point is that they make good soldiers precisely because they are not yet mature and are much more capable of the physical demands than thirty-somethings. The reflexes of an eighteen year old are much faster, which offsets the casual disregard for many of the dangerous conditions that can occur with driving a vehicle, but it does not make one an adult. Being capable of killing another human does not make one an adult-witness the penchant, in some parts of the world, to entrap kids into rag-stag armies before they're even big enough to be taller than the weapon they're wielding.

I was a very straight arrow, not learning to drink until I was twenty five and not even trying pot until twenty seven.

One sure sign of adult maturity is the ability to defer gratification, by choice, for the good of some future goal. Some kids are mentally mature at an age even younger than eighteen and those are the ones who don't find it a big hairy deal if they are not allowed to drink themselves into a stupor as a nineteen year old college student or a brave troop, offering her/his own tender body as a sacrifice to the gods of war.

The argument about when an adult is an adult needs to be couched in appropriate terms, not the same tired comparisons that stop intelligent discourse and turn a discussion into a yelling match.

Gives me something to really think about.

:thumbsup:

I was finally old enough and mature enough about 16 years ago to decide to stop drinking. Based on that, I figure people shouldn't be allowed to drink until they're at least 42 -- having spent the majority of their lives as an adult. Until then, more than half of their experience is as a child.
:evilgrin:

Lowering the drinking age?

Why the heck is the voting age 18??

If this person has assumed the full responsibility of citizenship, and that is to participate in the governing of said; that person has reached the age of choosing whether to imbibe or not.

Just my friendly IMO.

18 preferably, 21 would be ok to...

Regardless, qualification for all three should occur at the same time.

I'd even compromise with 19 or 20, but its ridiculous to consider someone an -adult- who can kill in the army and vote for president, and then call them a kid when they want a drink.

In France and Germany, often times families have alcohol at the table with their children, so when their children become teenagers, it is not really a mark of "coolness" or something "distinguishing" to be drinking alcohol, so you conceivably have less teenagers acting stupid with alcohol if they see it as an everyday thing instead of a "forbidden fruit."

banned. When I turned 18 I could legally buy booze back in the 1970s. What would make sense is parents raising their kids to see alcohol as a normal part of life that is to be handled responsibly and with a decent moderation. You'd then see a lot fewer college kids drinking themselves into comas on their 21st birthdays.

here's something to think about. When a kid hits eighteen, most likely he's graduating from high school, which puts him in a different social set that his high school peer group. Whether a kid goes to college, goes to work or even gets married, he finds himself in the company of adults all of a sudden as a peer group rather than authority figures. So when those adults go out for R&R and he tags along, he suddenly finds himself not able to have a beer at the local or a glass of wine at dinner, or many other occasions when drinks are offered.

So what's a kid to do? He get's a fake ID or tries any number of ruses to get served or buy alcohol. I remember one time when a group of us from the office went to a restaurant for a birthday and the only under twenty-one year old among us was the mother of two children. She had to drink a coke and said that anyone who had done child birth twice certainly deserved a drink once in awhile. I think that is your point about the soldiers who are asked to die for their country but can't have a beer because the are under twenty-one.

Now I know there are those inexperienced drinkers who binge and make themselves sick on alcohol the first time they are able to do it legally and I'm sure this will happen with eighteen year olds as well, but there is something to be said about lowering the drinking age to eighteen because these kids have entered the adult world overnight after graduation from high school and will probably need to learn the responsibility that goes with drinking along with all the other adult responsibilities that they are going to find thrown on them from this time on.

and everything is pretty much normal. No biggie.

18 and 21, respectively.

:evilgrin:

me likey!

and take all your driving classes. Getting ready to retire your bicycle, and use all that money you have saved for years on your paper route to buy a car.

The driving age does not need to be lowered. They have already placed so many restrictions here in California for the youth drivers. Let them have their licenses.

Jeez, ya killjoy!

nt.

All those posting in favor of the 21-year drinking age, do you realize that it is pretty much ignored?

Kids who want to drink drink. And it's very easy on college campuses and elsewhere. It's easy to buy alcohol with a fake ID. And many parents supply their kids with alcohol, too.

Whatever the merits of drinking for someone under 21, the fact is that they're doing it anyway. Why not let it be out in the open and regulate it? Prohibition didn't work for people over 21; what makes people think it works for those under 21?

Frankly, go farther than just lowering it to 18... allow parents to buy their children drinks in restaurants as young as 15. Make it a graduated thing, put very strict restrictions on drunk driving and allow kids to BUY alcohol when they turn 18.

If 18 is the age of consent, it seems that 18 year olds should have the right to have a drink like anyone else.

However, I don't think there is any reasonable reason for 16 year-olds to be driving cars. We all know personal anecdotes of kids crashing cars, and the stats bear this out - teenagers' brains are still developing, and for the most part the judgment
centers are not ready for a task like driving, especially with other kids in a car. I imagine we would see a lot fewer accidents if kids had to wait until 18. Here in Japan, you can't get a license until age 20, and you need to take an expensive and rigorous driving course and exam.

As for drinking, we need to teach young kids how to drink responsibly, not this parochial attitude we have now.

In fact, I'd be okay with lowring the drinking age to 17. Give them a year to learn how to drink, learn their limits, etc. I think the "verboten" aspect of US alcohol laws may be responsible for the binge drinking so common among US teens. They hit 21, and suddenly most of them drink more reasonably...

way more, probably at least an order of magnitude more, than the Iraq war, but do so every single year.

You know what? The lesson to learn here isn't that the drinking age should be lowered--which it shouldn't--but that the US needs to withdraw from Iraq immediately.

Well, a small disclaimer. I *know* it was a good idea here, where the legal limit is indeed 18, but this may come down to cultural differences.

Specifically, people start having a drink or two before they start, and here it meant that very many people learnt reponsible drinking from adults, ie. their parents.

But hell, who knows whether or not it would work in America; I hear you have an age of consent up to five years higher than us. (16 here).

Well, food for thought anyway.

Edit: I would like to point out that it's a LONG time before you can have any alcohol *at all* and drive.

And legalize all drugs too, same minimum age. Kids need to learn some responsibility.

and Congress passed a law to "encourage" states to all raise their legal age to 21 - by tying highway funding to states' legal drinking age. I think that Louisiana was one of the lone hold-outs for a year or two before acquiescing.

18 works just fine :D

unless you can produce military ID, which will suffice at any age.

If you are old enough to vote, You are old enough to have a drink. I have been saying that since they raised to age to 21.


Peace

Hobo

:beer: :toast:

Binge drinking became a huge problem when they raised the drinking age, and there's certainly a lot more drinking on campuses than there was 20 years ago.

And it's just illogical to think you need more experience when you decide whether to drink than you do to decide for whom to vote.

I think the age of majority should be 18, for everything, including getting a full driver's license -- or even 21, just as long as they're consistent.

In fact, I dare say that raising it to 21 didn't do squat - there's more binge drinking at that age than there has ever been. I'm also amused that it is conservatives that are whining about this since it was they that jacked up the drinking age in the first place.

BTW, I'm not much of a drinker and I find drunks annoying.

Not 18 because there are still a lot of High School students who are 18 and I really don't want to see them in a bar on a school night.

Seriously, though...

They're ADULTS, legally, with every ramification that goes along with it. Name one other thing an adult is restricted from doing until a certain, arbitrary age? Running for president at aged 35, maybe? What else?

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I hate the death situations kids...and everyone else...get into when they drink. However, if we are going to keep the drinking at 21, we sure as shit shouldn't be able to send them off to WAR until they are 21. Period.

"Hey kid...go kill and die but you may NOT have a beer before you go." NOPE!!
Lee

If you're old enough to drive, old enough to enlist, old enough to kill for your country, old enough to enter legal contracts, you're old enough to drink. End of story.

People who say they're not mature enough are frankly fucking insulting. This society doesn't need your paternalistic nanny-state puritanical bullshit. This society needs more liberty.