Should the drinking age (U.S.) be lower?

@boomerang,

the reports I saw indicate that the movement ran into the expected buzz saw of majority hostility and collapsed. There is zero tolerance for returning some rights and privileges to teens and young adults, in fact we are not done taking away yet.

1 Reply

@boomerang,

I agree with all the others who think it makes more sense to have the legal age at 18.

And I'm not a big fan of drinking at all. Nor kids with driving licenses and a newfound freedom to drink and go clubbing swarming the streets.

Drunk driving, at least where I am at, (MB) is a serious problem . But it is hardly a cause of the drinking age. In fact, there is a good healthy dose of middle age and older people blatantly drinking and driving as much as the young people.

On a side, lowering the age all around to 18 would keep more money on the US side of the border too. haha. How much cash have all these little towns and cities on the Canadian side gobbled up with the waves of young Americans on vacation?

Personally, wouldn't really mind if you keep them. They are like cagey animals let loose for the first time.

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Cub called me last night. He was out with friends and heard about the possible lower drinking age. He asked, "Wouldn't that be awesome?"

Uh, no. It would not. He just had two close friends spend a year in Germany/ Austria as exchange students. They came back alcoholics, out of shape and overweight. Before going, they were very fit first string players on the football team with all A's and a couple of B's.

My teens have already lost 10 schoolmates since starting high school to drunk driving. Lowering the age may take away the "coolness" but it doesn't make them any more mature.

I'd feel better about it if it was tied to high school graduation, full time employment, college status... something that made them show they were responsible enough to handle it.

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@mushypancakes,

legal age for alcohol in Australia is 18.

Binge drinking still happens and is recently being targeted by governments.
Kids still die in cars as a result of teenage drunk drivers.

1 Reply

@hawkeye10,

a sum-up of the pro 18 year old legal drink argument is here:
http://www.youthrights.org/dafaq.php

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@squinney,

maybe collage kids are more responsible, maybe not, but for sure prohibition laws don't work....18-20 year olds drink, a lot. I thought America learned the prohibition lesson about 80 years ago, but guess not:

Quote:

The National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 Round 4 data set was used to examine self-reported drinking behaviors of student and
non-student 18 to 21 year olds. The results of this brief compare NLSY97 findings to the results of the published major binge drinking research literature.

The study found that when abstainers are included in the analysis, 43.7 percent- of college students and 34.5 percent- of non-college students admit to
binge drinking on at least one occasion in the past 30 days. In the 30 days before the interview, non-students had consumed more alcohol per day on the days they drank than college students had. Non-students reported that they consumed a mean of 5.58 alcoholic drinks on the
days they drank and college students reported a mean of 4.76 drinks. The results also seem to indicate that respondents who engage in binge
drinking behaviors do so at least once every two weeks.

These findings generally agree with previous studies' findings that college students have a higher prevalence of binge drinking than their
same-age non-student counterparts. Researchers attempting to understand other life factors and correlates of binge drinking behavior should take note of this agreement

http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/1/1/6/2/8/p116284_index.html

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@dadpad,

I don't know about Aus, but here there needs to be more done about the drinking and driving still.

Superficially they talk about doing something about it, but it is still a joke. And people know it.

It also may be a cultural thing. General attitudes to booze and how much alcoholism there is going around a country.

The alcoholism stats for my province is pretty bad. What about where you are?

It's fantastic if there is more effort and targetting to keeping everyone safe from drunk drivers - that should be a huge priority regardless of drinking age!

1 Reply

You try to raise your cubs to make good decisions. As teens, few do. The lessons you give them don't generally kick in 'til later. Do your best....pray they survive.... and hope for the best.

Mu oldest cubs were wild women when they were young. One is now a banker, the other in the health care industry and has raised a well balanced polite and responsible son.

1 Reply

@blueveinedthrobber,

a lot of adults don't make good decisions either, so what?? It is no reason to maintain a law that is grossly out of whack with human behaviour. Just as the goal when raising children should be to have them grow up to upstanding adults the goal of drinking laws needs to be to encourage responsible behaviour. Somehow we got it all screwed up, we decided that parenting was about protecting kids from every risk possible, and that drinking laws were to encourage teens and young adults to not use alcohol. In the long run all this stupidity does is encourage the production of messed up adults, you don't teach be refusing to let younger people deal with things and thus learn from their experiences.

1 Reply

@hawkeye10,

why are you yelling at me? Crying or Very sad

I am in agreement with you. Please try to consider my extremely sensitive and gentle nature.

1 Reply

@blueveinedthrobber,

ya, I realize that we agree. Sorry, I should have pointed this out. This subject of drinking laws rolls into our concept of what parenthood and what childhood are, how best to raise kids. I am sensitive on this subject here at a2k because I have been the lone wolf claiming that kids should not be sheltered, caught hell for this idea when talking about teen sex. Having someone agree with me, even part way, is an unusual place for me to be.

1 Reply

@mushypancakes,

Quote:

I agree with all the others who think it makes more sense to have the legal age at 18.

And I'm not a big fan of drinking at all. Nor kids with driving licenses and a newfound freedom to drink and go clubbing swarming the streets.

Drunk driving, at least where I am at, (MB) is a serious problem . But it is hardly a cause of the drinking age. In fact, there is a good healthy dose of middle age and older people blatantly drinking and driving as much as the young people.

On a side, lowering the age all around to 18 would keep more money on the US side of the border too. haha. How much cash have all these little towns and cities on the Canadian side gobbled up with the waves of young Americans on vacation?

Personally, wouldn't really mind if you keep them. They are like cagey animals let loose for the first time.

What is "MB" ?

0 Replies

@squinney,

Quote:

Cub called me last night. He was out with friends and heard about the possible lower drinking age. He asked, "Wouldn't that be awesome?"

Uh, no. It would not. He just had two close friends spend a year in Germany/ Austria as exchange students. They came back alcoholics, out of shape and overweight. Before going, they were very fit first string players on the football team with all A's and a couple of B's.

My teens have already lost 10 schoolmates since starting high school to drunk driving. Lowering the age may take away the "coolness" but it doesn't make them any more mature.

I'd feel better about it if it was tied to high school graduation, full time employment, college status... something that made them show they were responsible enough to handle it.

Yeah, but u know, America is supposed to be
the Home of the Brave and the Land of the Free.
I think freedom is what makes life worthwhile.
Did we ever give any government jurisdiction
to tell us what we can put into our bodies ?
How can we consider ourselves to be FREE,
if we can 't even decide what to do inside our own bodies ??

(This question comes from someone who just got his car totaled out
by a drunken driver a few nites ago; she is 71 years old.)

David

0 Replies

@hawkeye10,

Quote:

ya, I realize that we agree. Sorry, I should have pointed this out. This subject of drinking laws rolls into our concept of what parenthood and what childhood are, how best to raise kids. I am sensitive on this subject here at a2k because I have been the lone wolf claiming that kids should not be sheltered, caught hell for this idea when talking about teen sex.
Having someone agree with me, even part way,
is an unusual place for me to be.

Hawkeye:
When I was a kid I had a lot of freedom; I was alone a lot, and my parents
manifested a laissez faire philosophy, tho very affectionate when we were together.
I loved my freedom and I 'd have defended it if that had been necessary
(tho I do not remember many challenges thereto).

Many decades have passed since then, but I am still that kid inside,
just fatter, older n uglier. I have not had occasion to change the libertarianism
that I held dear and practiced, as a kid. (Note that I lived a usually quiet life
and stayed out of jail.) Let the record indicate that I support freedom for
every human being (not including babies too young to walk n talk).

Altho I did not discuss my sex life at age 11 ( with girls of 17 and of 23 )
I certainly knew that I was autonomous in this as well as in all of my personal decisions.
Accordingly, I supported the concept of freedom of teenage (or 11 year old) sexuality.
I am glad to have enjoyed these experiences and I 'd not begrudge them to anyone.
U will detect that my libertarian individualism embraces your expressed
position, and hence I am in substantial agreement with u, on this point.
I suspect that my love of freedom exceeds yours.

In my espousal of the Original Intendment of the Founders' philosophy,
I am very stingy in conceding jurisdiction to government, knowing (as thay did)
that personal freedom is INVERSELY PROPORTIONALto the authority of government.

Are you English, Hawkeye ? or in England ?

David

1 Reply

@boomerang,

alcohol should be illegal, as are other drugs.

2 Replies

@OGIONIK,

ha! We should expect to see joefromchicago any time now. He's been trying to make that case for ages. He doesn't ever get much acceptance on his position, but it's a theme that's been hit on many drinking threads over the years.

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@OGIONIK,

It was.
We 've been there; done that.

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@OmSigDAVID,

I am American actually, and I am very sure that you are far more libertarian than I am. For me the focus is always the combination of individual as well as collective health, I believe that the correct course is the one that works best to achieve both. So far as I can tell this always requires that the collective allows individuals the max freedom possible and the individual allows the collective to look out for the collective interest. It is a "you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours" bargain between the individual and the collective.

1 Reply

@hawkeye10,

id love to start making my own liquor and selling it at black market prices.

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@mushypancakes,

The problem, alluded to by Homer Simpson "I'm in no condition to drive...wait! I shouldn't listen to myself, I'm drunk! ", is one of state-related learning. If we did driver safety education of kiddies while they were drunk they'd remember it the next time they were drunk.

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Should the drinking age (U.S.) be lower?

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