This is something that I have felt strongly about for some time now. Should the drinking age in the US be lowered to 18? I certainly think so.
You can smoke at 18 (and smoking is far more harmful than drinking, it would seem). You can vote and serve your country at 18. Forgive my graphicness, but you can have sex at 18. Basically, most people start their adult life in every way at 18.
So why not drink?
Thank you in advance to all who reply:)
That seems more like an argument to raise the smoking age.
Drinking is far more potentially destructive within a younger age group who exercise poor restraint and judgement. If anything, the drinking age should be raised even further.
Not to say that doesn’t prevent underage drinking in any way.
What about a compromise: 18 year olds can drink, but only in bars. That way, they can’t get too intoxicated (because it’s illegal to serve alcohol to someone visibly drunk) and can get an introduction to booze without going overboard. It would have the added benefit of avoiding the problem of high school seniors buying booze for freshmen.
That’s no compromise at all. Bars are arguably the worst place to get introduced to alcohol. Visibly drunk people get served alcohol all the time, and now we’ve got groups of 18 year olds going to bars, getting drunk, and driving home.
Isn’t it blindingly obvious that you should be introduced to drinking at home, in the company of people who know you and care about you, and who have already learned to drink themselves?
I had always assumed that the “US drinking age” of 21 meant that you couldn’t buy alcohol, or be served alcohol in licensed premises, until you were 21. But ignorance is being fought, it seems; the tenor of this thread suggests that it must be illegal for a person under 21 to consume alchohol, even in their own homes, or as a guest in someone else’s home. Is that right?
Mostly yes. I think it varies according to state. If the minor is at home and the legal guardians have approved it, they can drink but I think not to drunkenness. My understanding however, is that when the drinking age was raised to 21, the number of alcohol related deaths have decreased. I am not sold on the idea that lowering the drinking age is the answer here. I fear that we will see teenagers drinking to excess just as much. Only now it is legal for some of them.
I was 18 in Texas when the drinking age was 18. It did not rise until well after I was 21. It is set state by state, but IIRC the federal government threatened to withhold highway funds from states that did not raise their drinking ages to 21. Thus, all of the states did. Even though I enjoyed drinking during that period, they did have a lot of convincing statistics highlighting the DWI accident rate, and when the age went up, the accident rates did go down. I would probably rather see them keep it at 21, but it’s no big deal to me if they lower it again. But good luck! The insurance industry will lobby hard against it, especially after they lobbied so hard to get it raised in the first place.
If anything I think they should lower the age for those on military bases with valid military ids.
It is absolutely ridiculous that I can be trusted to kill someone if I feel I need too but I’m not allowed to by a beer?
I remember I got kicked out of a bar because it was 2 weeks before I turned 21, even though I was already gearing up for my second tour to Iraq.
I don’t like the idea of lowing the drinking but 18yo are Citizens. It’s no more fair to say they can’t drink than it is to say Amerinds or women or Blacks can’t.
In CA, a over 18 but not 21yo faces only a minor code enforcement civil violation for drinking- unless drunk or while driving, etc. Driving in the carpool lane with no passenger is a more serious fine. So,it’s illegal but not part of the Penal Code. ianal.
I live in a province with a drinking age of 18; I don’t think there are any particular problems with it that would be solved by raising it to 21. If anything, raising it to 21 would just clog our judicial system with charges for underage drinking, because I don’t think raising the drinking age would change drinking habits much at all.
I also live in a country with a drinking age of 18, and it seems to work for us. However, there seems to be this strange drinking culture in the U.S., where young people feel the need to drink to excess on a regular basis, as if they’re trying to prove some sort of point. We don’t really have that here.
What I would like to see is an environment where a 16-17 year old is able to have a glass of wine if his/her family goes out for dinner or goes wine tasting. Maybe legalize for 14+ provided it’s bought by and consumed in the presence of a parent or guardian, and only by the related minor. (We start them in at with half-shot Irish Coffee at 13 at Christmas time in my family).
Otherwise make it 18. I don’t like the idea but if you’re going to be an adult, you should get the privileges that come with it.
That’s because responsible drinking isn’t taught. By the time you’re allowed to drink legally, you’ve already been on your own for 3 years. Whereas the idea of the pub as a meeting place and social gathering in many European countries, in the US, the bar is the place where you go to get trashed and hopefully find someone else drunk enough so you can get laid.
The age should be 18, or raise the age of majority.
The drinking laws went up right when I was old enough to drink. Kids in my high school who drank on the weekend were lamenting having to wait yet another three years until they can drink legally and go to bars. These new laws were courtesy of some bitches called MADD whose because their kid was killed by a drunk, or made bad decisions in some cases, to make this law that an adult can be arrested for alcohol consumption.
My next door neighbor in the dorms at college got busted at age 20 buying a bottle of Champaigne and actually went to court, having to get a lawyer, etc. He was charged in an adult court for buying alcohol underage. I think the big obstacle of lowering the drinking age has to do with driving. Personally, I think the driving age should be raised to 18 except in some cases. A lot of kids get killed when their parents by them a hot rod and they crash it out. A lot of inexperience on the roadways by young drivers, with a small percentage of them under the influence of alcohol. MADD twists these figures to say that there are a lot of drunk kids driving and killing themselves because they can get alcohol available to them, when alcohol is merely a contributing factor.
I lived in China for several years where there was no drinking age. I like to drink and have gone to parties and social situations with Chinese and have never seen anyone under 19 drink at all. I have never seen anyone younger than about 18 in a bar, except one time with my friend in Shanghai where a bunch of teenagers came down. I thought it was funny that I am legally drinking with a 15 year old, but my friend did not like the vibe and we left. Most of the Chinese youth are going to school, working, or playing sports of computer games. The kids who do like booze (and drugs) usually don’t get the taste until they are 19 or 20 and away from home.
The USA has irrational, asinine alcohol laws. You must be 21 to possess it. One cannot drink outside. In many places, one cannot buy liquor on Sunday. Some states have “State Stores” for booze like in Pennsylvania. Dry counties. Mandatory closing times of alcohol sales in bars and stores. I hate it.
If I want to buy a fifth of Jack Daniels whiskey at 7 AM on freaking Easter Sunday, where in the USA can I legally buy it? Nevada?
This is exactly so. The states can set any drinking age they want to provided they are willing to lose highway funds to this very day:
Yet another one of Frank Lautenberg’s greatest hits. But I digress.
Which is what still bugs me about the drinking age in the US. The liquor licensing laws cripple an under-21 high school graduate’s social opportunities. What if you don’t want to drink alcohol, but you would like to go dancing or hear a live band? You can’t, because those places have liquor licenses and you can’t get in. If only there were some way around that, so under-21s didn’t have to keep falling back on illegally purchasing alcohol and getting trashed in a parking lot or dorm. I despise the idea of a bar/club being a place you go strictly to get trashed and hook up.
Yes, it always amazed that the car is so damn holy that the immediate response to teen drunk driving is to raise the drinking age. Raising the driving age would fight the drunk driving problem more effectively, as well as the general high accident rate of teenage drivers, but we can’t have that! High school students wouldn’t be able to deliver pizzas! They’d have no place to make out! Horrors!
I think this is the key to it. The US has a much higher drinking age than most other western countries (and I think a much wider concept of what restrictions a “drinking age” imposes), but it also has teenagers/young adults who spend much more time behind the wheel of a car than most other countries. Youth + drink + driving is a really awful combination; something has to give. The US has made a different choice than most other countries but, hey, wasn’t that the whole point of the Revolutionary War?
Where I grew up drinking is legal from 16 onwards (beer/wine; 18 for stronger stuff), but people were drinking quite a bit before that. I remember in highschool (when most students were 15 and some 16) we went to Berlin on a school trip and of the three nights we had there, two nightprograms consisted of going to a beergarten…with teachers and all.
My experience is that, after having been intoxited - or even down right drunk - on severeal occasions before even having my first driving lesson, most people are very carefull combining alcohol and driving. Pretty much anyone I know will not drink if he knows he’s driving.
Anyone who thinks that keeping the drinking age at 21 instead of 18 because of fewer accidents must explain to me why the age isn’t 22, 23, or 30. Surely there would be even fewer accidents then. Is 21 a magical number or merely arbitrary?