Well, it was once the voting age, but I don’t know how it was chosen for that either.
It presumablly represents something of a compromise. The problem is not just driving + drink; it’s driving + youth + drink. Any combination of any two of these is problematic; the three together, very problematic.
If you have to draw a line, I think insurance companies experience is that about age 25 is a statistically meaningful dividing line between drivers whose age is associated with an increased claim risk and those whos age isn’t. Thus you could make an argument for a drinking age of 25 (though the liquor industry would probably have views about that). Or a driving age of 25.
No country goes that far. You have to balance the risks against the personal and social advantages of being able to drive, and to go to licensed premises. Other countries go with 18 for a drinking age because, basically, colllege students don’t drive very much. In the US they drive more.
Give me the latter over the former any day.
I’m just jumping in to agree with this. I’d sheepishly kept quiet because Britain does have a real teenage drinking problem - we can buy alcohol at 18, but everyone starts much earlier if they can get away with it - but the problem is not one of drunk driving. My anecdotal experience is that drink driving is frowned upon heavily even by irresponsible teenagers, so it isn’t a major issue, whereas drink driving seems more prevalent in the US. Maybe that’s down to lack of public transport.
Of course, many teenagers in the UK don’t learn to drive til they’re over 21 anyway - we can drive legally from 17, but getting a car just isn’t a high priority for many of student age.
It should be lowered. You are always going to have problems with drunkeness and alcoholism so long as you have alcohol. It seems to be something genetic or in the personality. Lowering the age to 18 and allowing parents to provide to their own children will introduce it sooner and take away the mystery. I know plenty of people who got blitzed at 15 or 16 and became responsible drinkers far more quickly than their elder counterparts. The impact of a miserable hangover is far greater at an impressionable age.
The drinking age should be 18 (or rather probably 16) because people are adult at that age, and the state has no business trying to protect grown people from themselves. Kids younger than 16 should be allowed to drink if their parents think it is a good idea, because the parents are the guardians of their children, not the state.
If you think it’s odd in the US, consider Thailand. Although there is no legal penalty for underage drinking per se, the legal age for purchasing alcohol and entering bars is 20, but you can work in a bar at 18. There have thus been instances in which a customer in one bar in one of our several red-light areas has “bar fined” an 18- or 19-year-old girl – that is, paid the bar a small fee to take her off premises during her shift – and then taken her for a drink in another bar, and an undercover cop has popped her and shut the “offending” bar for a month or more just for letting her in the door. !!!
My suggestion has always been two liquor licenses. A license for beer & wine, which allows you to serve 18 plus, and a license for all alcohol, which requires you restrict entry to 21 plus.
That has benefits including preventing (in theory) access to hard liquor for the younger drinkers - while you can harm yourself on beer and wine, it is a lot harder to do so than on tequila. Nine years of bartending showed me that it was shots that would push people into the stupid behavior.
Now, 21 year olds aren’t significantly more mature, I will agree. However, it is likely, especially if age limits are rigorously enforced, bars will develop serving different groups - and people from 21-25 or so are more likely to be in the beer/wine places, as they will cater to a younger crowd.
Now this helps older drinkers like myself as well, as we are less likely to have the idiotic drunk puking college kids in the “older” bars.
ETA - I don’t think the comparison with Europe works particularly. It’s not a difference in maturity levels of the people concerned as such, its the infrastructure/culture. Europe has much more integrated public transporation systems, while in the US, even with drinking at 18, people will drive before they start to drink. In Europe one tends to be immersed in the bar culture before driving, and so there is less of a potential for drink driving, especially with the public transport alternatives.
I am old enough to remember when you could legally drink at 18. Sure, there were plenty of wasted kids pouring out of the bars at my college. 18 year olds, away from home for the first time, seeing how many pitchers of beer they could put away. These days the exact same thing goes on except that the kids have to do it in their dorm rooms or friend’s houses or in their cars. Maybe fewer kids drink now, I would be interested in seeing some stats. But the worst feature is that an 18 year old, if he wants to drink, must break the law. Once he has decided to break the law why not go futher?
I asked my son (20) how hard it is to get booze in college. He laughed. Apparently there is a thriving black (more like a light grey) market for alcohol and fake IDs. That opens the doors to other illegal activities.
I can’t believe this is debateable. Hell yes the drinking age should be lowered. Unfortunately, it would have to be lowered by all 48 contiguous states, or you’d get the “bloody borders” problem that the National Minimum Drinking Age Act was enacted to deal with in the first place- and Congress doesn’t have the authority to do that.
The Supreme Court does, but equal protection arguments have been tried and failed before.
Whatever the drinking age, it should be set by individual states. The 10th Amendment has been sodomized repeatedly in this country using economic blackmail. Speed limits, seat belt laws, helmets, drinking ages, etc. should all be set by the sovereign states.
With that said I would not be opposed to lower the drinking age to 18.
It totally boggles my mind that the US public was OK with this change (effectively taking a fairly fundamental personal right away from millions of American adults by moving drinking age from 21 to 18). I always assumed it was throw-back from the Prohibition era, but it was passed in the 1980s.
And yet as a Brit its me who has to put up with “nanny state” jibes about the UK 
Ah bollocks - it’s not a fundamental right. And it is more pleasant for us oldies. Every time I go back to the UK, I am amazed at the 18/19 year olds in pubs, and not in a good way.
Though maybe if we can work out that girls can drink in bars at 18, and guys not till 30… (Yes, I know it isn’t allowed - Craig v. Boren and all).
The US public is easily stampeded into things through fear. MADD convinced them that their kids were all going to get killed driving to other states to get drunk (or driving back while drunk, more importantly).
Some of them undoubtedly would have been killed, but so fucking what?
This is pretty brilliant, actually.
Yes, with every passing legislative session, it is becoming increasingly riskier to adults to introduce the kids in their charge to safe and sane drinking habits.
Luckily, that state is doing such a fine job of it themselves. :rolleyes:
What about Passover? That is when the kids in my family learned to drink
In Fresno unitl a few weeks ago, there was a nightclub that had a all-ages policy. Under-21 could not drink, and they enforced it well.
So the under 21s got trashed at home and drove, or waited until they were in the parking area to get trashed, then they went in.
A few weeks ago, some of them did just that, 3 18 and 19 year old girls. Video fro a nearby liquor store turned up of an adult buying liquor for them. When they left, the driver turned the car over on the highway, coming to rest upside down in a lane.
Where they were promptly squashed by a passing tour bus, and I think 9 people died altogether.
The parents, from respectably religious Central Valley families, were stunned at what their daughters were up to. The Mormon family took solace that their daughter - not the driver - was found with no alcohol in her blood. She was raised right they said in the paper.
Not right enough to insist on driving apparently.
The paper left unstated how these families felt upon finding out that their daughters had been at a large gay entertainment event.
And of course all liquor licenses in Fresno were immediately cracked down on, as though this was any of their faults.
I was already 18 but not yet 21 when the age went up, so I was grandfathered in in my state.
As I recall it, the main justification at the time was that the older HS kids were buying for the younger ones. That wouldn’t really be expected to stop, but the ages could be moved up a few years, keeping the 15 and under set more sober, since they are less likely to hang out with 20-somethings.
Heh, I suppose I’m one of the few people in the minority that believes the drinking age should be RAISED from 21 to around 24-25, and anything less should simply be considered self-destructive behavior. But that’s merely a neurological viewpoint, and not a political/legal one really. Anyone drinking before their frontal lobes fully develop just makes me cringe a wee bit on the inside, but smoking is the same problem with the way the lungs get crushed. So not really sure what the perfect solution is there- plenty of people will espouse the idea of personal freedoms and it’s their body, their choice to do whatever they want to it.
And so, since we do have an overpopulation problem and we do have budget problems in this day and age- why not take the same stance on that as I do with Cigs and Marijuana- legalize it/lower the age/whatever, and just create a vice tax to tax the hell out of it. **/slightly tongue in cheek opinion **
In all actually, not sure how i feel about the drinking age being raised or lowered, so I say keep it the same- as I don’t really see what positives can be made for the idea of lowering it by 3 years, other than the “it’s my body, my freedoms, Man!” argument. Raising the driving age though, I DO like that idea and never really thought about that one. Or maybe have a “temporary drinking permit” license at first for the ages of 18-21, where if your parent’s sign off, you can apply for a permit that allows you to consume alcohol, but not purchase it. I see no point to it really, but it seems like a nice middle ground for all those kids out there who have the argument “Well, I’ve been drinking with my parents, and there’s no problems with me”, so that way they can continue to do so, and we can all pretend like there’s someone responsible watching over their drinking, when they do so in the privacy of their own homes.
Just use that temporary permit as basically a “trainer’s guide to getting used to drinking” so that if they have no misdemeanors or problems with ETOH use, they can get their full blown permit at 21, and all is well again. Hell, maybe we could even add a little payment to apply for the cards, and then we can try to make a profit once again off of people’s vices, and allow them a chance to better explore their subliminal stage of life with the help of a little alcohol now and then.
As I recall it, the main justification at the time was that the older HS kids were buying for the younger ones. That wouldn’t really be expected to stop, but the ages could be moved up a few years, keeping the 15 and under set more sober, since they are less likely to hang out with 20-somethings.
The drinking age for myself was 18 back in the 70’s. I could legally drink during most of my senior year in high school.
But it had been incredibly easy to get liquor from freshman year on as there was always an upperclassman looking to make a buck that would get it for you.
There are still some high schoolers that are 18, but few are 19. I wonder if there are any statistics that show a 19 drinking age would dramatically curb access for those in high school any more than an 18 age or any less than a 21 age.
The age in Wisconsin was raised to 19 in the mid 80’s. But it was very brief before it was raised to 21 to comply with the federal governments thuggery. Not long enough to complete a valid study on the effect of raising it 1 year.