I still find it amazing that 18 year olds can legally buy guns, but not alcohol. That’s just silly.
Why not introduce “Alcohol Awareness” as part of the “Civics” classes at High School in a students final year? Pass the course, you can drink at 18. Drop out before that, no drinking until you’re older.
The main thing for me is it just seems to be prohibition lite. No matter what age you set, there will be health benefits, if people actually follow the law.
The only reason its not set higher or for everyone is because people would be able to stop it happening through the electoral process or would disregard it as per prohibition, which is why its not 25.
Otara
In CA, at least you must be 21 to buy a handgun, iirc.
HoboStew there was a good reason once- Citizens had all the rights including voting, non-citizens had limited rights. Citizens were 21+.
In a perfect world. Seriously, I’m thinking back to the Cro-Magnon types that populated my high school in West Texas, and I honestly can’t see any such class as that denting their Friday-night “liquorin’ up” one little bit.
The law (federal law, anyway) is a little screwy. One has to be 21 to purchase a handgun from a licensed dealer, but only18 to posses one. I’ve known a couple of people who were under 21 and got hired as part-time police officers where they had to supply their own duty weapon. They had to have their parents (or over 21 spouse) buy it and then give it to them. :smack: This country is goofy on a couple of things.
What about longarms (shotguns and rifles?) It’s long been my understanding that the age to legally purchase those is 18 in the US.
By federal law, yes. YMMV depending by state.
The Netherlands have an drinking age of 16. it seems that most kids, as with most things, deal just as responsibly with alcohol when they are 16 as when they are over 21. However, another group (rough estimate without a cite: 15 % will) go overboard just as much as the US group does at 18 or 21. But at that younger age, concerns have risen that alcohol does damage the brains of these kids.
If it wasn’t such an hassle to enforce, I’d say we in the Netherlands would be better off with an alcohol limit at 18, just like in Canada.
My point is that throughout much (if not most) of the US, an 18 year old can legally buy a Remington M870 shotgun and as many shells as they can carry- but not a bottle of beer.
That seems more than a bit silly, I’m afraid.
Just as silly as he can legally possess (and in many states carry) a handgun but not buy it.
What else is there that one can possess as long as he/she did not buy it?
Ha. Found a couple of cites. All of the research lumps the 12-17 age group together, so you don’t have much distinction between the real young and the almost adult group. However, the stats are:
In the Netherlands, 90% of all youngsters between 12 and 17 has ever drunk alcohol. So, even one sip of beer counts. I doubt this is much different in the USA.
The average alcohol use in this age group is surprisingly high: teenage boys about 4 glasses a week, girls 2 glasses a week. This is of course an average between the “almost never” and the "every weekend"group, so it doesn’t say much.
90 % of teenagers drinks exclusively in the weekends.
The percentage of heavy drinkers in the Netherlands has stayed the same for the last decade, at about 20% for men and 7 % for women. heavy drinkers have at least one day a week where they have more then six drinks a day.
Men of 20 are, in the Netherlands, still the group who drinks most heavily. So perhaps the policy of no alcohol untill 21 is a wise one. Might make it as well 25, looking at the facts, then.
So take that as the social experiment it is. When you wonder about how a change of policy in the US would work out, look at Canada, the UK or the Netherlands.
No, which is why it’s stupid and should be lowered. We’ve decided, as a society, that 18 is the age of majority. The government should have to demonstrate an awfully compelling interest to prohibit a specific post-majority age group from doing something, which it never has in this case (and can’t).
My interest in not having drunken 18 and 19 year old males in the bar isn’t compelling enough for you?
Why do you think this needs a compelling interest by the way?
Drinking isn’t a fundamental right. And age (at least youthfulness) isn’t a protected class.
We had a US Navy ship pull in here and I got talking to the dude who was in charge of the shore excursions. I asked him about the US drinking age and he said they abide by the local laws (18 and loosely enforced), in other words he was unleashing hundreds of kids who’ve never had a legal drink in their own country on us, and sailors who’d been at sea for months at that. Bizarre.
The bar is free to limit patronage to those over 21. It’s a free country. Anyway, you’re not a bartender anymore.
Hence my use of the term should, not the term must.
I’m on record as saying that Roe v. Wade was bad law, but if the Supreme Court can find that the Constitution guarantees a right to privacy which protects abortion, it bloody well ought to find that the same right protects beer.
I meant as a customer (and I wasn’t being serious, either).
I think that is probably stretching privacy a little too far. For me this is a rationality issue not a constitutionality one.
What do you mean by “fundamental right”? Drinking alcohol is something that human beings (sometimes) do, and in and of itself, the act harms no-one (except, possibly, the drinker). Granted, drunkenness may sometimes lead to other acts which cause harm, and those may be addressed as appropriate–but here we’re speaking of the freedom to take the drink, itself. What is the basis for your claim of a right to abrogate this freedom of adults under 21?
Of course, but that doesn’t factor into the law much. 
I’m refering to fundamental right as specifically used in American legal analysis. It’s the rights that if restricted, there must be a compelling state interest, and the law must be narrowly tailored to meet that purpose.
Drinking alcohol has never been recognized as one of those, especially not being 19 and drinking alcohol. If a state were to set its age to get a driver’s license at 19, similarly, I don’t think it would run into constitutional issues (though that one is closer as the right to interstate travel is considered a fundamental right).
I think the government has the power (not right) to abrogate this freedom of adults udner 21 for the same reasons they have the power to abrogate the freedom to smoke weed of adults.
I think the age should be lowered, for beer & wine, as I have said earlier. I just don’t see this as a constitutional issue. And, for once, I bet the Supreme Court agrees with me.