Inspired by this thread I decided to start a thread on why I think the military should lower the drinking age to 18 for service members.
A little background first . . .
I am not 100% sure on all the armed forces or even for all the bases OCONUS (not in the US) but the drinking age for service members is 21, what ever it is in the state, or set by the post commander. In Fort Campbell, Kentucky, it clearly is 21. If you are caught underage drinking, you will receive administrative nonjudicial punishment causing you in most cases to lose rank, money and time. How we charge is, is to assimilate the state laws into military code thus allowing the military to charge you with underage drinking. The specification looks something like this:
In that you, did, at Fort Campbell, KY, a place under exclusive or concurrent federal jurisdiction, on or about 21 Feb 06, wrongfully consume or posses alcohol while under the age of twenty-one years, in violation of TCA 57-3-412(a)(3)(A) and or KRS 244.085(3) assimilated into federal law by 18 U.S. Code Section 13. This is in violation of Article 134, UCMJ.
The military also provides very very strong punishments for drinking and driving; however, the majority of the time, the service allows civilian courts to handle the issue and serves the soldier with a career ending letter of reprimand
Now for my background . . .
I joined the military at 17 and went to basic training at the ripe young age of 18. I turned 19 in Iraq for the first time. I turned 21 last year. I finally was able to have my first legal drink after having spent a year in Iraq in combat. I am by no means a huge drinker but I am a bit perturbed by the fact that I could not have a drink after serving my country in combat. It is my firm opinion that after you have joined the service and completed the mandatory training you should be able to legally drink alcohol. It is true that drunk soldiers can cause a lot of problems and get in a lot of trouble. I have seen vast examplesWhat do you think?
I searched for a similar thread and couldn’t find anything like this, some mentions of military and the drinking age, forgive me if there was a previous thread on this.
I agree with the above sentiment: if a person is mature enough to sign away their life, kill, and possibly get killed, they are old enough to have a beer.
I retired in '79, but I can tell you that drinking was a big problem at that time and had been for quite a few years. All the services were cracking down on irresponsible drinking and part of that was raising the minimum age to 21.
Recent research on the human brain has demonstrated that decision making skills are the last to develop and are not complete until the early twenties, so that would tend to reenforce the idea of using 21 as a min. drinking age.
The “old enough to serve, old enough to drink” argument is older than you or me and it’s never convinced anyone to overlook the statistics of drunk driving, drunk fatalities, lost time do to drunkeness, rehabilitation costs, etc., etc.
The overwhelming majority of people w/ addictions to drugs and alcohol began drinking in their teens. It’s logical to believe that restricting, at least part of, that behavior until 21 will likely reduce the number of addictions.
I think there is something to the “old enough to kill” thing, for the civilian drinking age as well as military. Despite accident statistics, etc, isn’t it a little silly to tell an 18 year old that they can join the army, make life-saving or ending decisions in battle or rescue zones, they can vote and decide the leader of their country, they can enter into legal contracts, get married without parental constent, be considered an “adult” in pretty much every situation imaginable - but they can’t have a beer???
Either people are old enough, or they aren’t. If evidence shows that 18 year olds simply cannot handle the responsibility, then maybe they shouldn’t be considered adults in every other context either. I come from a province where the drinking age is 18. I turned out ok. Frankly, I was shocked just moving to Ontario where the age is 19 - already the difference (partially cultural) was amazing at how much more irresponsibly people were drinking. Not to say the age should be even younger, but I think if we stop presenting alcohol as inherently evil, and allow people to LEARN how to drink, rather than forbidding it to the point where people go out and do dangerous things to get it, we might be better off!
I just don’t get the double standards in places where you can be an adult but not drink.
I just got back from being stationed in Germany with the Army and the legal age there is 18. In my experience, the younger guys in my platoon all had issues with alchohol. This applied to the 21 and 22 year olds as well, but it was way worse when it came to the 18 and 19 year olds. I was the supervisor of a couple of soldiers who had VERY big problems with alcohol. One ended up paying of a rental Mercedes because he could not lay off the sauce.
I just got back from being stationed in Germany with the Army and the legal age there is 18. In my experience, the younger guys in my platoon all had issues with alchohol. This applied to the 21 and 22 year olds as well, but it was way worse when it came to the 18 and 19 year olds. I was the supervisor of a couple of soldiers who had VERY big problems with alcohol. One ended up paying off a rental Mercedes he totaled because he could not lay off the sauce.
I’ve heard these arguments before. In fact I used to make them myself, back when I was under 21: “I’m old enough to die for my country; I should be old enough to have a beer!” As I’ve gotten older and (one hopes) wiser, it’s become perfectly clear to me that my arguments had nothing to do with “logic” or “justice”; I just wanted to drink, and I was looking for any rationale in favor of same.
I really don’t see a logical connection between being old enough to join the military and being trusted to drink alcohol responsibly. If logical consistency is what you’re after, why not argue in favor of raising the driving age to 18? The dangers of driving irresponsibly strike me as more analogous to those of drinking irresponsibly.
(Take this as coming from someone who was never in the service and has been of legal drinking age for 13 years now.)
As rwhbyu stated, the military in general will let you have a beer at age 18, provided you are in a jurisdiction that permits this. The military defers to local law on drinking age matters, which is why soldiers in the U.S. must wait until they are 21.
Additionally, certain chains of command may order additional restrictions on drinking, for the needs of the service. I certainly encountered enough of these in my time in.
True, the military used to defer to local laws regarding drinking age and they still do to a degree. However, the current trend is for the military to impose it’s own drinking age if it feels the local age limit is too low. Usually in these cases that means raising the bar to 20 or 21 dependingon how many problems they have or who the theater commander is. Now that I re-read this I realize where I meant to offer a minor correction to Mr. Moto’s statement he rendered my correction pretty moot with that whole “in general thing” so I’ll just go ahead and give my opinion on the issue.
While I agree in with the idea that if you’re old enough to serve, old enough to vote, and are considered legally as an adult then it’s entirely inconsistent that you’re somehow not old enough to drink. However, I can’t get too worked up about it because I believe that in cases like this, pragmatism generally trumps consistency.
Having scores of contradictory and ill-concieved laws regarding every facet of our lives is just the price we have to pay for living in the freest country in the world.
I would say that the age for everything should be 18. Until then, you can’t drink, drive, get married, give consent, sign anything legally solely with your own signature, serve in the military, etc.
The only exceptions would be for emancipated minors who are at least 16, who work full time and pay taxes, or are independently wealthy and pay taxes, who do not live with their parents or (former) guardians, and who cannot be claimed as tax deduction on anyone else’s tax return. They would be able do all the things other people can’t do until they are 18.
Exactly the reason why I suggested age 21. When I turned 18, my older sister took me out for my first legal drink. She said there is a world of maturation difference between 18 and 21. Being 18 at the time I didn’t believe her. In time I saw the light.
Actually, I was being polite. I’d raise it to 25 these days.
I am a former military health care worker, and the father of two military members. My own experience suggests that even young adults legally allowed to drink routinely exercise poor judgement and have impaired work and social skills beyond the period of intoxicity.
Expanding those problems to a younger crowd would exacerbate the problem, and literally endanger the safety of a military bases in the whole.
As a liberal, intellectually I agree with the OP. In practice, I know it would be a bad, bad idea.
