Lower the drinking age to 18?

[walterick]

About 100 college presidents nation-wide have teamed together in an effort to ask legislators to lower the legal drinking age to 18. They claim that having the drinking age at 21 encourages binge drinking. Others claim that the death toll from teenage drinking would increase if it were made legal for them.

Where do you stand?

Washington Post

(other sources are welcome)

[Skyman]

Binge drinking occurs because people don't have access to responsible models of drinking. There are two main categories of young drinkers. Those who have obeyed the law and those who haven't. of those who haven't, even if parents provide them with access to alcohol and supervise their drinking, there is still a clandestine element that tends to lean towards short periods of excessive drinking (binge drinking) for those who have obeyed the law and reach 21 they have no supervised experience of how alcohol will affect them and will often drink to excess in a short time, not necessarily through intent but lack of knowledge. In Australia the legal age to drink is 18 and this hasn't led to an increase in alcoholism, alcohol related deaths or binge drinking. However in Germany and many other European nations, the legal age for purchasing beer and wine is actually 14 or 16 depending on where you are from, and the legal age for purchasing spirits is 18. This makes more sense but only if the appropriate societal attitude is upheld. In Germany young people are taught by example that you don't drink to get drunk, but as a compliment to a meal and that drinking to excess should be avoided. Lets face it many younger people given this situation would choose not to drink alcohol as beer or wine doesn't suit younger tastes, and so are allowed to develop a mature attitude to drinking before being introduced to harder stuff (and that includes alcopops) However I feel that those cultures that do have lower drinking ages have developed responsible drinking attitudes over centuries and that it would be very very difficult to expect American society to adopt them. In short I think lowering the age isn't a bad thing, but I don't think America is mature enough to handle the consequences. oh and I am not being anti American, I think Australia could be well served to adopt the Alcohol laws of European nations, however it also doesn't have a mature enough attitude to alcohol nor the cultural demeanor to ensure that youth are taught responsible attitudes to alcohol.

[Frog]

Good points, Skyman!
If the general attitude toward drinking remains the same, I'd be more in favor of raising the legal drinking age to 40.
As soon as the youth, especially males, get away from home they want to party and party means drinking to get drunk,(why else would anyone drink a Budweiser?).

[Jaedon]

I was raised with that same view towards alcohol but you don't have to go as far as Europe to find it. Just look north of the border. Most of the Provinces have a legal drinking age of 18. I believe in Ontario that it is still 19 but don't quote me on that.

My parents allowed me to taste alcohol growing up and they drank at social occasions around the house and sometimes with dinner. But I never saw my parents drunk. Not to say they didn't get drunk.. they simply didn't "act" drunk as that was socially unacceptable. Society has changed since those days and it is more and more acceptable to drink to excess. I haven't seen anyone tossed form a bar for being too drunk in a very long time. When I first came of legal drinking age and went to my first bar I saw people regularly getting removed from the bar for being too drunk... or getting too friendly with the servers due to being drunk. That was 17 years ago.

The problems that the colleges are facing is that they are stuck with the problem of how to teach this generation to be responsible drinkers while at the same time telling them that it is illegal.

Here's the position the college level educators are in. They MUST say.. drinking under the age of 21 is illegal. But then they need to face the reality that a bunch of kids under 21 away from home for the first time in their lives for most of them, need to be taught to drink responsibly. So now they say, "drinking under the age of 21 is illegal......but if you are going to drink ... be careful". And that is all they can say. Lowering the drinking age will allow for discussion, permit interaction with the adults about it, and encourage a better social attitude if they can talk about it in a open forum rather than giving the mixed messages they are forced to give under the current laws.

Sure it will take time. Everything does. But if you don't start somewhere then you end up stuck where you are right now. Opening the dialogue is the best way to start and by removing the mixed message by legalizing it and working on the younger generations now, you can change societal attitudes over a few short years with the knowledge gained from societies who have learned it over generations as examples.

[Medley]

If you are old enough to enlist in the military (or register for the draft, as the case may be), then you're old enough to walk into a bar and order a drink. The one should be lowered, or the other raised.

Not surprisingly, the legal drinking age on base is 18, or at least it was "back in the day"....

- Joe U.

[SmartWombat]

They claim that having the drinking age at 21 encourages binge drinking

I don't believe a word of it.
Our drinking age is 18 and binge drinking is a serious problem here.

[GB1]

I also doubt that the 21 year old law encourages binge drinking.

But, I also don't believe in saying that a person's old enough to vote and to fight for his country in the military, but not old enough to drink. The '21' number was just pulled out of their ying-yang.. there's nothing physiologically significant about the age of 21 that makes it better than 18, except that perhaps the person's been out in the working world for a few years or are a Junior in college.

Maybe they're afraid that some of the HS seniors will turn 18 and buy beer for their underage friends, or just come to school drunk or hung over, making it a HS problem when it currently isn't one.

[Anbesol]

Well, to be cliche - if you're old enough to fight youre old enough to drink. I agree that legalizing it would encourage responsible use.

[Dylan8i]

GB1 i would beg to say that it is already a HS problem, i know many people that would come to school hung over/drunk, and in many after school activities either have booze or be drunk.

that being said i never drank in HS ( i was 18 all my seinor year) and my parents rarely drank when i was growing up (glass of wine a day). but when i went to college, due to not much else to do in town (small farm/amish town in PA) and everyone that stuck around on the weekends drinking thats what we did. wether it was legal or not thats what
we where going to do.

i think binge drinking is a social problem not an age one, that is currently a kind of right of passage... drinking games, competitions, as well as social lubrication, being away from home for the first time etc all adds up to the problem.

[reverberation]

The only reason colleges are promoting this is because thats what their lawyers are telling them to do. If you have underage drinkers on your property and one of them gets hurt, there will be liability issues. Binge drinking in Colleges is completely out of control. They know this, thats why they are looking for a way to protect themselves.

[Kajuah]

I think they should outright ban alcohol all together. Where i'm from 95 % of the crime rate is due to the abuse of alcohol, a quote I remember from my EMS days and my later interest in policing. Legalized drug which has more ill effects and abuse rates than weed? And yet it's legal? Want to know why? Taxes. There's literally hundreds of millions of dollars generated in alcohol sales annually..and that's just in Canada alone. Some towns have pledged and had their pleas answered with a dry community effect - and it's a proven stat up here that the crime rate in those communities is effectively lower than the ones without.

But a total ban is unrealistic, and I think and have started pledges to have a local bylaw where I live for drinking to be only allowed in the bars (no liquor store). Why? Because bars have maximum limits, and when you get too violent you get thrown out. No sitting at home abusing your family, no going out drinking 40s in the streets and stabbing someone (it happens on a weekly basis where i live) or getting into fights or raping women. Granted you may argue that can happen with someone leaving a bar with too much to drink, but what happens where I am from is people buy literal 1000s of dollars worth of alcohol for ONE WEEKEND to drink for themselves and a handful of their friends (literally 5) and they go out and get completely ripped.

In my perfect world; a total ban should be allowed. Either that or legalize speeding because that's just as fun and you use more gas (another highly taxed item) and if you're careful (essentially the argument of being careful with your drinking) and respect your limit (the speed you're capable of driving effectively without getting in an accident; keeping in mind, also a parallel to drinking limits) then it can be a fun activity to engage in, safely, without harming another (where have you heard this before?).

[SkipT]

To ban it would make it an under ground item again and would really make the crime rate sore!

Maybe we should just leave it alone hehehehe

[drg]

The last reasoned university based discussion of this nature that occured included lowering the drinking age to one similar to many European countries 14-16 and Raising the driving age to about 25.

With or without the influences of drugs or alcohol, drivers older than 25 continue, in the U.S. anyway, to be far safer and less costly drivers.

The campus environment doesn't have to be one that slides continuously more towards greater per capita alcohol consumption.

The University of Miami has greatly changed the behavior on campus in a short period of time! Now when they can do it, any school probably will have an easier time.

In the midwest communities and schools have had to cooperate to work on this problem, including going as far as to cancel Halloween. Yes, send the students home for a weekend or two or three days.

The question as whether students in institutional housing should even be allowed to have alcohol in the residence, including the Greek systems if on campus, needs to be looked at again. Many smaller colleges and universites banned alcohol on campus altogether in the late sixties to early seventies because of problems very much like we are seeing on a larger scale today.

Then as a result of alums who were financially important, many, many schools relaxed or changed the policies. Lots of reasons but included the schools themselves sellling alcohol in a 'controlled' setting. Examples include University Clubs, dining/entertaining facillites for conferences and exhibitions and of course contributors.

Leaving aside the school setting, shoud we lower the overall age just because it is convenient, regardless of the damage it does, or even just remove limits all together but increase penalties for resultant use and abuse?

For example, drive drunk once, you don't drive again. Or for 40 years plus a whopping fine.

[SkipT]

In the midwest communities and schools have had to cooperate to work on this problem, including going as far as to cancel Halloween. Yes, send the students home for a weekend or two or three days.

As they did for SIU here, halloween used to be a blast on the strip untill the students started burning cars, stabbing people and acting the fools :P

[DGK*CRONE]

I don't think 18 year olds are responsible enough for us to lower the drinking age.

[Medley]

I don't think 18 year olds are responsible enough for us to lower the drinking age.

So we need to protect them from themselves with regards to alcohol, but it's perfectly fine for us to let them buy a house, start a business, join the military, or enter into legally binding contracts????

I'm not saying I agree or disagree to lowering the drinking age- just that there seems to be a bit of confusion. Either adulthood starts at 18, or it starts at 21. Make a decision and go with it. Either lower the drinking age to 18, or raise the legal age of everything else to 21.

Of those two, lowering the drinking age makes the most sense- though I'd love to see the reaction from the bankers, mortgage lenders, and general business community for trying it the other way.

- Joe U.

[ken1953]

It was tried before here in the US and failed miserably. As pointed out in several posts here, it's the attitude of "party" at all costs that causes the abuse of alcohol and drugs, not only in the US, but all over the world. Yes, some countries do have a better social attitude towards wines and licquers, but these were meant for social settings. Most brews nowadays are designed for one thing...to get drunk. Frog said it right, ( i paraphrase) "if it weren't for getting drunk, why would anyone drink a "budweiser"", or just about any american brew. Well enough of my rant.

[RP Racing]

An 18 yr old buying a house, entering into a contract or start a business isnt gonna be out at 2am killing someone doing those thngs. We have had a rash of underage drink drivers in this area. Also rather pathetic when I see 19 and 20 yr olds in the papers arrest reports on their 2nd, 3rd, and a couple 5th DUI arrests. And it doesnt help that WI is very LAX when it comes to DUI. By the 3rd DUI you should be banned for life from driving. They already proved they arent responsible enough to drive.

If they lower it to 18, why not 16 then? You can drive at 16, quit school at 16, legally separate yourself from your parents at 16.

Heres an idea. Raise the driving age to 18. Then when someones 18 they cane make a decision. They can choose to either be allowed to drink at 18, but cannot drive until they are 21 or they can chose to drive but have to wait until 21 to drink.

Hell if it was my dime paying for my kids for college, they wouldnt be partying. You are going to school to learn, not get hammered every freakign weekend.

[ciddog91]

Good discussion.... I think the drinking age is fine at 21. As for fighting for your country, buying a house ect...... If you are 18 and doing theses things, you are the exception not the rule.....

Just my .02.....
Phil

[Black Moor]

Not much will change if the drinking age is lowered. People will get what they want, regardless of laws.
I started drinking when I was 15, I had easy access to alcohol just like most teenagers do. I started chewing tabacco at 16, and again.. easy access and had many willing people who would buy it for me.
If the age is lowered, all that'll change is you'll see more 18 year olds in bars. As far as the actual amount of people drinking, it won't change.
And it won't promote binge drinking... if anything it'll do the oposite. I, like many people, got excited to drink when I was 15, 16, 17 and 18. But the second I turned 19 and could buy my own alcohol, the novelty wore off. And I drink, on average, a beer or two a week now.
For a few months, 18 year olds will get excited to hit up bars. But when they start paying $6 for a Budwieser (piss in a can as some Canadians call it), they'll slowly stop going, as the novelty will wear off.