For depriving adults who are between the ages of 18 and 21 the freedom to purchase, sell, and consume alcohol publicly.
Adults who can fight and die for their country in battle, who can participate in deciding who will be the next Commander In Chief, are needlessly treated as second class citizens for three years.
With the war on Iraq that will inevitably ensue because of our warmonging President, I face the distressing possibility that I will die on the battlefield before I can casually walk into a bar in this country and order a drink without being arrested.
To MADD, for your persistant lobbying in the 1980s to convince Congress to deprive states of their right to choose by depriving them of Highway Funds unless they comply with your measure:
I express my admiration for your original goal of preventing drunken driving, but your insistance that 18, 19, and 20 year olds who are otherwise considered adults for everything else be prohibited from consuming alcohol even if they never get within a mile of a motor vehicle in the process, makes no sense. All I can say is that you blue nosed soccer moms should have left well enough alone. Perhaps sticking with the focus of more severely penalizing those who are actually harming others by their actions would have been a better idea.
I reserve my deepest hatred, which burns with the fire of 10,000 Suns, for an organization known as Pennsylvanian’s Against Underaged Drinking, whose website I had the misfortune of stumbling upon. These are people who send out ads urging people to report 21 year olds who supply wine for their 19 year old girlfriends. I’m no resident of Pennsylvania, but relatives of mine are, I find that the “Zero Tolerance” law passed in their state as a result of that group to be draconian and unfair in the extreme.
I would like to announce to you, and all the rest who think anyone under 21 is incapable of consuming alcohol responsibly, to know that I will be taking periodic trips to Canada (where the drinking age is 18 or 19 depending on the province) after I graduate High School in order to openly show my disdain for the laws of the United States of America.
That protest would be more meaningful if you stick to it after 21, ie you are taking your business elswhere permenantly. Otherwise your protest looks awful similar to the default position of most underage drinkers living near jurisdictional borders.
(I openly showed my disdain for Ontario in Quebec when I turned 18. When I turned 19, then I only showed my disdain between 1:00am-3:00am. When Ontario moved closing hours to 2:00am I stopped acting on my disdain)
If you get so hammered in Canada that you pass out up there, nobody in the US will see any evidence of your ‘protest’. Active resistance only works if there’s cameras on the spot to advertise something illicit.
Tripler
I am not advocating getting hammered. I’m just suggesting your protest tactics are wrong.
True, but unfortunately I have a fear of being arrested. If I had a couple hundred brave 18 to 20 year olds who would drink with me I might do such a thing. Because then I’d know that what I did would get in the news.
I suppose the next best thing would be to make a video of my Canadian drinking episode, explaining my disagreement and the reason why I drove 200 miles to Canada, and send it to MADD, those evil Pennsylvanian’s, and all the congressmen who passed the Federal Minimum Drinking Age Act of 1984.
This brings to mind a friend, who a few years ago got hammered in an unfamiliar town, and then decided to light up a joint. He left the bar, walked up the street a ways, and lit up. Right in front of the police department! Ha!
Blalron, on the drinking issue I agree with you 100%. I am 28 and was arrested for having a six pack of beer in a truck with 3 friends on the way to a party. My driver’s license was taken for a year, and I was fined $250. Thank God that some judges in this country use their brains instead of just reading sentencing guidelines. Under appeal, my fine was reduced to $50 and no driving suspension.
What if the shoe was on the other foot? How much hell would be raised if people over 65 weren’t allowed to drive, due to bad eye sight, slow reflexes, hearing loss and just plain loss of brain function? This country would be up in arms and cries of discrimination would be above the fold on the front of every newspaper. How many old people from Florida bitched after the presidential election debacle? Should people that can’t figure out how to punch a hole through a piece of paper be considered mentally capable of helping pick the leader of the free world?
All of age citizens of the U.S.A. should enjoy the same rights as others. I think that I read something about that somewhere…
But that’s just my opinion, I could be wrong (but I doubt it)
My suggestion, take a bunch of friends up to Canada, go out drinking and have someone videotape it. Give it to the local news station, if the news there is as slow as it is here, they will end up showing it (sooner or later). That should piss some of those people off.
"…In the Mid 80’s, in response to lobbying by Mothers Against Drunk Drivers (MADD), Congress amended the United States Code, Title 10, Section 2683 to require military installations to comply with local state laws in regard to drinking age. Prior to this, all active duty military personnel were allow to purchase, possess, and consume alcohol on military installations. The thought was “old enough to die for your country, old enough to drink…”
That’s weird. When I was active duty from '89 through '93, people that were younger than 21 were buying alcohol on base all the time. I was 23, so it wouldn’t have affected me.
Why is there a very real possibility that you will die on a battlefield? In case you hadn’t noticed, there isn’t an active draft anymore*, so unless you’re enlisting voluntarily, the chances that you will meet your maker in the deserts of Iraq is approximately zero.
*Although I would not put it past the current administration to reinstitute one.
I agree in some ways with the OP, concerning the bowing to pressures using dubious statistics and facts that have resulted in this country’s drinking ages. But I also see no inherent reason to treat unlike things – say, consuming alcohol and performing military service – alike just because people would like them to be treated alike.
In my ideal world:
There would be no legal “drinking age.” The age for purchasing alcohol could be set at a reasonable limit, but there would be no law preventing minors from consuming alcohol, especially if provided by their parents in their own home. Drunk driving laws would have BAC levels set at a reasonable, scientifically meaningful level and enforced on all drivers.
Voting rights would be extended to any American of any age capable of passing the same test given to naturalized citizens. If a 15-year-old is fully capable of understanding our government and our laws, and making a meaningful, informed decision, let him vote.
The driving age would be raised to 18, just as it is in many European countries.
I was in the Army 1992-1995, at my first duty station servicemembers between the ages of 18 and 21 were allowed to buy beer. Hard liquor however, was off limits.
And the whole “I’m old enough to fight and die for my country, but I’m not allowed to drink a beer” argument really doesn’t work if you think about the fact tat we have an all volunteer military. It’s not like you’re going to be forced to join and fight in Iraq.
How does the fact that military service is voluntary affect this argument? The rationale concerning military service vs. drinking isn’t about appeasement (i.e. if we’re gonna force’em to die for us, we should get’em drunk first), it’s about age of consent. To my mind, if a person is considered mentally and morally competent enough to be allowed to volunteer to risk his/her life, and mature enough to handle firearms of ghastly power in the service of anything, then I think they should be considered capable of deciding whether or not to have a beer or two with dinner.
I was previously unaware that the drinking age effectively prevented anyone between the ages of 18 and 20 from consuming alcohol. Learn something new every day, I guess.
Until more than a few years ago, the drinking age on US military bases was whatever the drinking age in the surrounding community was unless there was another community with a lower drinking age within 50 miles of the base–in that case, the drinking age on base was that community’s drinking age. Now it’s whatever the drinking age in the surrounding community is. In California, the drinking age, both on and off base, is 21 years of age. In Japan, the drinking age on the US military bases is 20 years of age.
There are different ages of consent for different activities, mischievous. One might just as well say, “Hey, if I can operate a potentially lethal device such as an automobile on the public roads at the age of 16, then I certainly should be able to legally purchase and consume alcohol at that age.” It doesn’t wash. It’s irrelevant.
