In Portugal the minimum legal drinking age already is 18. And it’s the 7 most peaceful country in the world according to a recently made study. USA is 130th + if i’m not mistaken.
Cite? :rolleyes:
And assuming you are not actually pulling numbers out of your ass, I doubt the three-year difference in drinking age would have anything to do with that. I remember when the drinking age in every state of the US was 18, and it sure wasn’t any pacificst’s heaven back then.
No, it is not.
http://www2.potsdam.edu/hansondj/LegalDrinkingAge.html
http://www.alcoholpolicy.niaaa.nih.gov/stateprofiles/
I think that it’s definitely more a cultural issue than a legal one. We expect teenagers to “party” and so they do.
I agree that, if we were a smaller country and had better public transportation, raising the driving age might be a good option. But in most places, no car means no job, and we also want our kids to practice having a job and making and saving money before they leave the nest, so that’s right out.
But that’s the problem. As I understand it, the state can set their drinking age at whatever they want, they just have to give up federal highway funding. There can’t be a constitutional challenge because it’s not actually illegal in the first place.
Whether it could be challenged as circumventing the constitution, IANAL.
Well, if highway funding depended on the states restricting sale of alcohol to African Americans, there would be certain to be a challenge. However, constitutionally, young people are less of a protected class than racial groups.
From MADD - screens up.
In California (and other places I’m sure) we’ve instituted restrictions on teen driving. For the first six months or year after you get a license at 16 you can’t drive with other kids (an adult must be in the car), you can’t drive late at night, and any amount of alcohol detected in the blood is an automatic suspension. I’d need to look up the statistics, but it seems to work very well, and my kids didn’t mind. (There are exceptions for driving siblings and to work.)
When I was growing up the drinking age in NY was 18, and in Connecticut 21, and it was a disaster, as kids drove to New York, drank, legally, and then had to drive home loaded. So any change would have to be nationwide.
I think it is clear that the problem here is that we attempt to curb one of the most fundamental, most universal and powerful human urges: To get “dizzy” brain.
People will drive sleepy, drunk, high, distracted, stupid or will simply be unlucky. The only logical answer is to make all cars about as safe in the event of a collision as those electric bumbing cars at the fair.
In that spirit, we should raise the taxes on alcohol by 5-10% to fund research on the matter. It is only a matter of a few decades until the first collision-resistant bubblecar is produced. Cars will just bounce off of each other, just like bubbles except the cars won’t pop suddenly, or, at all.
Oh, no doubt that cutting off a large segment of the population would cut drunk driving. If we said women, or blacks, or WASP’s or any large segment couldn’t drink, the drunk driving death toll would decrease. So? If we raised the drinking age to 25, or 30 or hell- 40, the toll would decrease. Let’s make it 50. :rolleyes:
I’m not sure I would find any arguments promoting a lowered drinking age persuasive if they come from someone named DrDeth. 
I’m neither opposed nor in favor of any particular drinking age. But I do understand the rationale behind why they raised it back up after trying 18 for a while. Really, everything in this thread was said 30 or so years ago when they did try it, and I’ll be surprised if it happens again.
That’s correct.
No it isn’t. There is no federal mandate on this and Wisconsin has never been denied highway funds due to noncompliance of federal mandates.
Our taxes are high because"we" keep electing pols who want to spend us into being a socialist Disneyland!
I think the drinking age should be 18 but you shouldn’t be allowed into a bar until you’re 21. I don’t want to go to a bar and see a bunch of high school kids there, and I suspect the vast majority of bar patrons feel the same way.
Louisiana managed to keep an 18 year old drinking age through about 1997. It was finally raised through internal pressure. It was 100% legal to buy in stores, bars, drink in public etc. when I was in college in New Orleans through 1995. They did it though creative law writing. IIRC, it was legal for businesses to sell you alcohol but illegal for 18 year olds to buy. However, there was no penalty for buying either. Obviously Louisiana and New Orleans in particular has a strong vested interest in a lower drinking age but I wonder what would happen if another state tried the same approach. It meets the letter of the federal highway funds extortion plot.
I was going to suggest that a way to get public support for a lower drinking age would be similar to this. Rather than ban the 18-21 year olds from bars totally, you could have a split license system, as I saw in central PA when I lived there, where you have one license for beer/wine and one for liquor. 18-21 year olds could be prohibited from drinking in bars that had both licenses, and restricted only to the beer/war places.
Hell, I might even support making the age 25…
I might agree with this if I knew what you meant by “bar”? Is Chili’s or TGI Friday’s a “bar” under your definition?
A prohibition against them buying open alcohol would go the most smoothly IMHO.
I would like to see a state experiment this with 18-25 year olds. I would think this would reduce accidents even further because all the youngsters would have to go to a house party in order to drink. If they do get too drunk, they don’t have to necessarily drive away, and might be able to crash at the house.
Or they would drink in their cars. I don’t think we need more of that.
The way the legislation is written, you actually lose 10% of your Federal Highways apportionment. I’ve actually looked at state budgets before, and believe it or not, this often isn’t such a monstrous chunk of said budget at all, but most states aren’t allowed to run budget deficits like the Federal government, so any shortfall causes issues states aren’t willing to deal with.
Even as only a 10% reduction of the apportionment, no state currently violates the .08 BAC mandate for DUI or the 21 drinking age (both of which carry the 10% reduction penalty.)