This pisses me off.
You’re 18. You vote. Get your own lobby together. I dunno how many 18 - 21 year olds vote, but I’m pretty sure that if they showed enough voting muscle they’d get the laws changed pretty quickly. That can’t be a small group of people.
That’s gotta be a better solution than going to Canada to sit on your ass and cry into your beer.
Yes, Monty, I know that there are different ages of consent for different things. The idea behind age of consent rules (poorly implemented in many cases) is to prevent people from making decisions before they have the maturity to do so. For instance, the age of consent for marriage (a life-defining, but essentially personal and reversable process) is generally lower than the age of voting (which theoretically can affect the whole nation). Likewise, there is a ten-year difference between when you can become a representative and when you can become president, nominally to ensure maturity and wisdom in leadership positions.
So to return to my point, if 18-year olds are considered mature and responsible enough to make weighty decisions concerning their spouses, future political leaders, and risking their lives for the country, then doesn’t it seem ridiculous to say that the age of consent for having a beer should be higher than this?
Now, I personally think that children who grow up with alcohol freely available (i.e. Europeans) often handle it better at any age, and that 18-year olds are wildly immature. But I understand the arguement that the age of consent for alcohol is irrationally high.
Not that it ever stopped me from drinking. 
Gus28 wrote:
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.
A six pack? And YOU with friends?
what school were you at?
Blalron, what’s the rush to drink?
Just to clarify things:
My main objection is that I find it highly incongruent the way our current laws are set up. I’m not in a “rush to drink” because the mere ability to obtain alcohol is not the issue with me (since Canada is always an option for the next 3 years) what the issue is is to be able to obtain it legally in this country.
What I object to is our current system of “adult minors.” I think there should be a consistant age at which one is definitively an adult. There’s no need for situations like the following to happen in our society:
"Joe Bloe, 20, a respected member of the community with a job, a wife and 2 year old child, was charged with MIP (Minor In Possesion). Since he’s over 18 and no longer a juvenile, he will be tried as an Adult." WTF?
An 18 year old can star in a hard core porn movie, inhale carcinogenic chemicals into their lungs (tobacco), and purchase firearms. I hardly see what the harm is in granting them one more right.
And before you MADD people step in and say “1,000 lives are saved every year because of the 21 law”, I say to you: I don’t care. The same could be said about slavery: If you let negroes be free, they can go out and commit crime more often, thus raising the crime rate!
500,000 people die from tobacco use every year. It is said that 3,000 die from secondhand smoke. So 300% more innocent people die from an activity which is perfectly legal for 18 year olds to engage in. Let’s not forget the 30,000 deaths from Firearms which are legal for 18 year olds to purchase. And 40,000 deaths from authomobile accidents… in all 50 states, an 18 year old can drive. Yes, that makes PERFECT sense to keep the law the way it is now!
I’d like to see evidence of even one life being saved by the drinking age.
You are absolutely right. Approximately 10,000,000 are within this age range. 10 million disenfranchised legal adults. Yes, if we all marched at the nations capitol, and had sit ins in taverns and bars where we walked in and asked for a beer and refused to leave unless we got served (similar to the civil rights protests of the 60s) I’m sure changes would eventually come to pass.
hell, we here in MI prosecuted an 11 year old as an adult for murder. He still ccouldn’tt drink, can’t drive (even if he wasn’t in a juvenile facility), vote, sign contracts, buy cigarettes, legally consent to sexual contact, get married etc.
as was stated previously, there’s different ages considered for different things.
I think a kid who murders at the age of 11 should be tried as a juvenile. For the simple reason that they should be able to see the light of day again. If they are treated as an adult, they could get life in prison without parole. I don’t think it’s a good idea to have 50 and 60 year olds in prison for something they did before they entered middle school or before their balls dropped.
Oh, don’t get me wrong, I thought it was wrong to try him as an adult.
And, I argued w/folks at the time that had some one touched that kid’s groin, they’d have been charged w/Criminal Sexual Conduct, ‘person under 13’, required to register as a child molester etc. etc., so that the state would have been arguing in one courtroom that he was an adult who absolutely knew what he was doing, but in the next that he was a victimized child who couldn’t possibly have sufficient maturity to consent to sexual contact.
it’s not the only inconsistency in the law.
From what I personally recall (having been 18 when the drinking age was 18), the bigger issue was that for the high school kids, they didn’t often have contacts who were over 21. But they all had contacts w/kids over 18. So it became a real problem in the schools.
Do I think it stops kids - well, I have an 18 year old son who managed to get drunk more than once prior to his 18th b/day. Refuses to tell me who supplied it. But, he had some seriously negative consequences w/it. He says now, that there’s no way he’d buy for some one younger than when he turns 21.
I wanted to be able to drink before I was 21 too. You’ve only got a few more years till you are 21. At that point you won’t give a shit that those under 21 can’t drink. I know I dont. Personally, the idea of sharing my favorite bars with a bunch of drunk 18-20 year olds sounds terrible.
So, it may technically be unfair, but unless your demographic starts voting in record numbers it aint gonna change,because no one over 21 really cares:D
Quintas hit it on the head.
Not to be snotty, but Slavery has been illegal here in the US since, oh, 1865, roughly.
Negroes? I think you have more than one problem, son…
Here’s the question you have to ask yourself, is the law itself unjust or do I feel that the law is unjust in that it applies to me?
That’s really the only question you need to ask. If it’s the former, then fight it. Find others with like minds and fight it. Go out and protest, form a grass roots campaign, talk to your senators and representatives and your governor and be a part of this system we call a democracy.
But if it’s the latter…well, just wait until you’re 21. Trust me when I say you won’t give a shit about the drinking age then.
sigh
You’re probably right.
I’m 23, and I still get riled up about the drinking age. It’s just blatantly discriminatory, and I’d happily support a movement to remove it, if there was one.
At least by putting this post out for the world to see, I’m raising the conciousness about this issue. 641 page views for my political idealogy!
I don’t think it’s neccesarily true that you’ll always have people stop giving a crap about the rights of younger people once they reach the age that the law wouldn’t affect them.
For example, I would not support raising the driving age. I’ve also been distressed to learn that there is an petition circulating in my country for a measure that would prohibit minors from using country services (like public libraries) without parental consent. If that got on the ballot, I would vote it down even though it wouldn’t affect me if it passed.
MADD = Women’s Christian Temperance Movement
They apparently completely fail to see the difference between “drinking” and “drinking and driving”.
I haven’t stopped being concerned about age restrictions, even the ones that only discriminate against people younger than myself, and I hope I never do. In the same vein, I get upset about discrimination against minorities and women, even though I’m a white male.
This “just wait until you’re 21, then you won’t care” attitude shows why age discrimination is the most insidious type of discrimination. Would the civil rights movement have succeeded if the laws only discriminated against some blacks and some women, different ones each year? How many people would have bothered to protest laws that didn’t let them vote or own property, if they knew they’d be able to in a year, even though it meant someone else would be oppressed instead?
What I find particularly troubling is the way our media portrays the situation, simultaneously endorsing and yet not endorsing alcohol with the under 21 crowd.
That is to say, underaged drinking is treated like something that is casual and accepted. Note, for example, “American Pie” and its sequel, American Pie 2, and nearly EVERY college aged movie or High School comedy (which invariably shows High School Seniors drinking) out there. Consumption of alcohol by the underaged is treated like a normal, casual thing.
Yet, at the same time, our media (I’m talking about in general, there may be some rare exceptions) is not saying a damned thing about changing the laws. The hypocrisy of this is clearly to be seen.
I support this law.
I live in Montreal, and older drinking ages = more cute half-drunk American college freshmen for me. evil giggle
[sub]For gods’ sake, I’m kidding.[/sub]