I think you’d find Canada much like the US in this respect. A huge country in size, many communities far away from each other, and few options for public transit between them in most of the country. We also have urban areas with sprawling suburbs that have little local public transit, and virtually none late at night when the bars let out. To be fair, many major cities generally have excellent public transit in their downtown areas. But it may run infrequently, if at all, in the wee hours; and still, if you live in the suburbs, there remains the problem of getting back home at any hour.
Canadians can get their driver’s license in their mid-teens (I believe the age can vary by province), and they do. Graduated licensing makes sure that they earn a full license over time, but they do drive; and because of the geography, they drive a lot.
So we have a youth driving culture much like the US; and yet, the drinking age in Canada is either 18 or 19, depending on the province.
If you want to blame someone about not being able to drink until you’re 21, blame the baby boomers, specifically the younger siblings of the ones who got the voting age lowered to 18. It looks like they couldn’t handle their liquor.
That sounds to me like a classic case of correlation not causation. Drink driving deaths in the UK have dropped even more than that in the same time period (from over 1500 in 1982 to under 500 in 2007). But we didn’t change our drinking age.
Since the automobile & prohibition of alcohol were both introduced after that point, I would say no.
More seriously, I would counter that independence doesn’t have to mean doing everything (or even anything) different just to be different.
Well, then we need to give Congress that power. Growing up on the Missouri-Kansas border, I remember the “bloody borders” issue, if not that phrase.
I suppose we could set up customs checkpoints at all state lines. We kind of need that for gun control to work anyway. And certainly that much new border patrol work would create jobs, which politicians like to natter about.
Well, your “nanny state” actually gives you free hospital care when you wreck your car. That’s what Yanks find offensive. As libertarian as the USA appears to be, a great deal of the country is less “libertarian” than “opposed to personal security,” & their are a lot of nasty authoritarians running around.
How much of the problem was “bloody borders”–both by crossing state lines to states like Missouri with a lower drinking age, & by driving out of & back into “dry counties”? Maybe the mismatch is the problem? I’m not saying it is, just a hypothesis I would appreciate being shot down by facts if possible.
If in fact the numbers were an artifact of that, increased population due to the baby boom, & the culture shock/future shock of a new liberalization, then lowering it now might not be as bad.
So what are we trying to solve here? If it’s a moral issue about drinking to excess, then I don’t know that the state can do anything about it. I’m for lowering it to 18, since that seems to be the defined age in the US for voting and joining the military.
If we’re worried about drunks driving around, then the drinking age isn’t really going to effect much change. My proposal concerns penalties for drunk driving at any age - you get busted, you spend real time in jail. I would go for six months, but six weeks is probably more realistic.
Yup, if you have to spend six weeks in jail, you will probably lose your job, your kids may not be fed and your house may go into foreclosure. But tough shit - driving and drinking kills people all the time, and it is a completely avoidable behavior.
As I said above Britain had no such border issues, and didn’t lower their drinking age, and had significantly bigger fall in drink driving deaths. The obvious conclusion to me is that the drop had far more to do with stricter drink driving laws, that were taken more seriously by both police and public. This was something which happened in both countries.
In the UK (which as I mention above has done much better job of reducing drink driving deaths that US) you get automatic driving ban of several months for your first DUI. This seems like a more suitable punishment. I could be wrong (I’ve never personally experienced it) but it was my understanding that in the US courts are less likely to give a significant driving ban for the first offence. But I’d like to see some hard facts to show that to be the case.
It should be up to the states to set their own age. The hammer/extortion of highway funds is a thin veil of federalisimo overstepping. Nothing in the constitution says that the jackbooted feds should be dictating things like this; it’s immoral that they bribe/coerce states to sing to their tune.
Thank you. Not only that, but the courts have already interpreted the 21st amendment as giving the states the greatest control of laws regarding comsumption and sale of alcohol. The reason 18-20 year olds can’t drink, is because they don’t vote*. So politicians have no incentive to enforce their rights. I don’t know if any states have challenged the federal government about the failure to distribute funds, or if there is a legal theory to base that on, but it’s a problem… The 26th amendment was rapidly approved with little controversy because the Vietnam War had left people united in one way, in the belief that young men who could be forced to fight in a war, should have the right to vote. I think most people at the time also felt they should have the right to drink, but assumed that would follow. It did in many states, but at the same time, there was increase in the number of drunk driving accidents, and younger people were responsible for a disproportionate percentage of the accidents. At the same time, the parents of that age group became primarily baby-boomers, who IMHO had a tendency to ask for laws instead of actually raising responsible children.
*By 18-21 year olds don’t vote, I mean that people of any age who care whether or not 18-20 can drink, don’t generally vote, or vote on that basis.
Also, I assume you meant figuratively jack-booted. Very few feds actually wear jack-boots.
Ok, but I bet if we said no Blacks, or Amerinds, or dudes who don’t own Real Property couldn’t drink, there’d be less accidents also. :rolleyes:
So, if you are willing to discriminate against one group of citizens to make the streets safer, what other group would you include? How about women? They last got the right to vote before 18yo, let us say they can’t consume booze either. Why not?
I’m not impressed with all of the arguments that go, “I drank myself silly and never got killed.” I could include myself in that category. When I was young, I foolishly used to drink and drive on a routine basis. Not a damn thing happened to me. Didn’t get pulled over once. No accidents. Looking back, I consider myself very lucky, and I certainly would not extrapolate a law based on a handful of individuals’ personal experience. Lots did happen to others. If it ever came up for a vote, I would definitely vote to keep it at 21, but I understand the outrage, because know I would have been outraged if it had been raised before I was 21.
I’ve always thought that the drinking age and driving age should be swapped. I think a younger drinking age would allow kids to learn to drink responsibly, while they’re still living at home with their parents. It would allow them to develop responsible drinking habits, while not exposing them to the roadways. And how much damage could a 16 year old do with a couple beers, if they have no access to a car?
This way - by the time they are allowed to drive, they’ve been drinking for years. I would hope this would demistify the drinking experience, and make it easier to separate driving from drinking.
Like I said earlier, I really think this is how it worked with me and most people I know. Don’t know if it is true for everyone though.
Since I’m not American, I don’t want to be too opinionated on this, but in general it seems weird to me that drinking is the one thing that requires people to be adults+, I’m all in favor for setting a point where people become adults and then sticking to that for everything that you feel minors can’t do.
I like the European system where their parents will allow them some, even at a very young age, and ‘mentor them’ in it (yes it is not perfect either), not the US system where they get it as teenagers and hide their drinking parties from their parents knowledge.
Parental involvement, care, openness of mind, and acceptance is the key, not the age restriction which really doesn’t work and just brings underage drinking into hiding. The current US system demonized underage drinking and have brainwashed parents to think it’s wrong and bad automatically, which stops communication between parent and child - that is the dangerous part. Drinking is part of normal human behavior, and a part of self discovery (even normal animal behavior as moose get drunk off of fermented apples).
I voted for Reagan twice and supported most of his policies.
But not this one. And I was already in law enforcement at the time and curtailing auto fatalities due to drunk driving was/is part of my professional mission. But not at the cost of my states 10th Amendment rights.
If a state wants to set their drinking age at 18, 19, 20, 21, 25, 50, or even declare itself a dry state, that decision should be up to the people of that individual state via its own legislature. NOT the federal government.
States don’t have rights, and this is a classic example of where the distinction between rights and powers is important.
Individuals have rights. The government may not make a benefit dependent on not exercising those rights. You cannot tell an individual that he has to convert to a different religion to receive welfare, for example… even though the individual does not have a constitutional right to receive welfare. It’s called an unconstitutional condition.
States have powers, not rights. The federal government can make the receipt of a benefit conditional on how a particular power is exercised. There is no constitutional requirement that the federal government pay highway funds to the states, or to a particular state. The state retains the power to regulate alcohol and determine the age at which its citizens can purchase alcohol. But to hear people whine about the 10th Amendment in this situation is funny. Where in the constitution is the federal government prevented from allocating highway funds in this manner? The federal government doesn’t have any obligation under the constitution to provide it.
And also - let’s remember - it’s not the entirety of the funding at stake, just (IIRC) 10%.
