I really don’t remember the process by which the 21 yr old drinking age became the “law of the land”, but I’d guess it had a lot to do with the organized lobbying effort of parents (particularly moms-- MADD comes to mind) compared to the complete lack of organization among the affected group (18-21 yr olds) to put up a counter lobbying effort. Think about it. It takes quite ahwile for a lobbying effort to be effective, so even if there WERE an effective lobbying activity by 18 yr olds, they’d probably just give up after a few years when it became moot for them.
I think it’s just a consequence of American’s attitude towards crime. More so than other countries, we prefer to increase punishments and make stricter laws to solve our problems. Rather than try to find and alleviate the root causes of crime, drug abuse, drunk driving, and other societal ills, we impose three strike laws, lower BACs, mandatory minimum sentences, and imprison a larger percentage of our population than any other country. And we still have higher crime rates than many, if not most, other countries.
I’m all for individuals being responsible for their actions, but failing to recognize society’s role in creating these problems in the first place is simply misguided.
Duckster writes: “Actually, the drinking age, the legal age, the voting age, etc., should be 21.”
Even as teenagers contribute vitally to the economy by spending money they earn, they are marginalized from our “mature” world.
I remember a thread a few months back from a fellow (an Oregonian, I believe) whose high school had plans to force everyone to take a breathalyzer test before entering the prom. I am quite frankly embarassed to live in such as a society.
There is a difference between legal age and age of consent. I don’t think we’re discussing age of consent here. There are a number of other threads discussing that right now.
Yes, I know. My obscure point is that between 1971 and today, the maturity levels and political involvement of youth has changed, i.e., both have degraded substantially.
Then again, having 21 as a uniform legal age (including the possible draft and any enlistment into the military) might very well lead to more people questioning authority and the current state of blind following now occurring.
When my brother enlisted in the Air Force in the mid 80’s, the drinking age was being raised from 18 to 21.
If memory serves, there was indeed an exception for servicemembers between 18 and 21 – they had to be on active duty, but they were allowed to drink.
This was in either Tennessee (where my brother lived when he enlisted) or Texas (where he took basic training). He was over 21, so it didn’t affect him personally.
Duckster writes: “My obscure point is that between 1971 and today, the maturity levels and political involvement of youth has changed, i.e., both have degraded substantially.”
Cite?
I’m not necessarily saying you’re wrong, but isn’t it hard to separate cause and effect, here ? If legislation signals to the 18-21 year olds that their judgement just isn’t up to the point where you’re willing to treat them like adults, won’t some use that as an excuse to prolong the phase of their lives where they can escape taking responsibility ?
shudder My son is 18, and I can’t imagine him getting married, joining the service, signing a car note OR drinking!
Raise it ALL to 25! 
yeah, but that seems to be what happens when laws are unreasonable. no doubt if certain groups of people had their way we would repeat the mistake of alcohol prohibition.
Long-time personal experience and observation. Not everything will have a quantitative and qualitative third-party study, or cite. In the late 60s and early 70s it has been my experience the youth of the day were were concerned about the world at large, and their place in it (Gee, the possibility of being drafted, going to war and dying had something to do with it, too.), than the youth of today who appear more self-centered.
The military is not sold to youth for what it is, but the play time it offers. What remains true throughout is youth is cannon fodder for old men egos. Wars are actually fought by the young and naive. There might be more questioning of authority, and whether the country should partake in military ventures than the way it currently appears to be, when the cannon fodder has a higher maturity level and perhaps a grater understanding of the risks and benefits of such a venture.
(As an aside, the cites I often see here do not go to an authoritative source but just a web site where someone has expressed an opinion. While that may mean this post might better belong in IMHO, this is the place for debating such opinions.)
Good point. The longer one delays responsibility for ones actions, the harder it may be for some to become adults, however you may define the term.
Wasn’t there a study published within the past year or so illustrating that actual physiological, emotional and critical brain thinking actually does not manifest itself until the mid-20s? Sorry I cannot find the cite. While we may be physically be maturing at earlier age levels, the emotional and critical thinking areas do not.
Yet, what remains is the 18-21 crowd just cannot handle alcohol and driving responsibly (this is not to say older folks can). To take the dark view, being 18-21, getting drunk all too often and driving may be a good thing in that it eliminates the hard core from the gene pool early on. On the other hand, how many innocents on the road at that time are injured/killed as a result?
In the end, the heavy hand of the federal government imposing its authority on the states to have a uniform drinking age law is wrong, from a political point of view. Then again, the states themselves would never do it, again because of politics. And while the fed/state politicians argue about it, people die. So at what point is there, or should there be, a voice screaming out, “You’ve got immature drunk kids getting killed on the roads. Are you going to sit and pontificate in your state legislatures or actually take steps to reduce the carnage?” The feds made a decision the states are unable or even unwilling to take.
Duckster writes: “Wasn’t there a study published within the past year or so illustrating that actual physiological, emotional, and critical brain thinking actually does not manifest itself until the mid-twenties.”
If someone designed us humans, He did an even worse job than I had previously thought, giving us the ability to reproduce in our early teens but waiting until our mid-twenties to give us reason.
Maybe I was unreasonable before in demanding a cite, but you really shouldn’t say “wasn’t there a study” without showing some documentation. I’ve known people who could do advanced math beginning in their mid-teens, so I would think they must have had enough upstairs to be called “critical” thinkers by then. Give the kids a break.
YOu aren’t allowed to pump your own gas in Oregon??? What is the justification for that law? Does that mean all gas stations are full-service, like Sinclair stations are? If all stations are full-service, does that mean you have to tip the attendant every single time you get gas? I’d imagine if that were the case, nobody would ever bother putting just $5 in, you’d just fill up that way you aren’t blowing all your money tipping attendants.
I’m nearly certain I heard on The Learning Channel that such development happens at the same time as the development of the rest of the body. I don’t have a cite either since I saw the program at least a while ago, but I recall a study being done on pre- and postpubescent schoolchildren in which they were asked whether it was right for a man to steal a loaf of bread to feed his family. Almost all in the former group replied that stealing was wrong and hence it was immoral, but almost all in the latter group disagreed and said that given the circumstances, the man was justified in bending conventional morals to keep his family alive. This clearly shows some development of critical thinking.
In fact, I have directly observed in myself and my peers that such mental development does seem to happen alongside puberty. If I may so myself, my “physiological, emotional and critical brain thinking” is not unlike that of the adults I’ve met over the years. I can solve my conflicts peacefully, follow the writings of philosophers and make my own conclusions, perform feats of advanced mathematics (base conversion, square roots, complex algebra) in my head, and find a satisfactory logical solution to most of my daily problems.
The reason so many young people do wreckless and seemingly irrational things is probably more inexperience than undeveloped critical thinking skills.
I think we should follow the lead of the Germans on this one. They have 16 as the drinking age and 18 as the driving age. That way, if you’re the type that wants to experiment with binge drinking, you get that out of the way during the years before you’re allowed to drive. By the time you’re 18, you mostly have that out of your system.
As it is now, people’s big experimentation with binge drinking comes when they’re in their late teens, when they head off for college. Since colleges have began to prohibit alcohol on campus, and they have even prohibited alcohol at frat houses here at my school, that means all this partying will be at off-campus locations. So of course the natural result is alot of 18-19 year old kids driving back to their dorm rooms intoxicated. If you really wanted to prevent that, you’d make it legal and encourage parties to stay on-campus, so you could walk home.
Of course, I think this is all a matter for the individual states to decide. The incredible extent to which states’ rights have been eroded over the last several decades is an affront to federalism, and an insult to our founding fathers.
IIRC, the crackdown on alcohol on campuses began in earnest after a few well-publicized alcohol-poisoning deaths. It seems to have more to do with reducing school liability rather than drunk-driving.
While I agree that the method used to coerce the states into raising their drinking age was poor, even if the law was repealed, I wouldn’t be interested in lowering the drinking age in my state. Aside from the drunk-driving issue, there is the very real issue of just how alcohol affects a developing brain. I don’t believe the research is very clear on this, and I’d rather err on the side of caution.
In any case, no politican is going to stick his neck out over this issue. And why should they? According to this website:
http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/2000/cb00ff12.html
18-24 year olds have the lowest voter turnout. If 18-24 year olds really think this is an important issue, they should get themselves to the ballot box.
And support which candidate? I’ve never seen anyone with a chance of being elected advocate lowering the drinking age.
But that’s my point. Why would a politican adopt an issue that may only be of importance to a non-voting constituency? First, they need to start voting in large numbers, then they can try and make this an issue.
Well, I just turned 21 in February, and I have to tell you it doesn’t really matter to me anymore if 18 year olds can drink. But if I could change things, I would make drinking legal for beer and other low acohol beverages at 16 and make the driving age 18. That is the way it is in Europe, and I think it works well because they learn to drink before they learn to drive. But the problem in the US is that 16 and 17 year olds would really hate not being able to drive. And that would suck. The reason its not such a big deal in Europe is because of the vast public transportaiton network. That’s probably why it would never work here.
The problem, I think is the fact is that teenagers will drink, but in dangerous situations because it has to be secret. If teenagers could get crazy and party legally (which they want to and will do anyway), then there sould be some safe way to do it. We have a weird perversion with alcohol here in the US. It must be an anglo thing, because its the same in the UK too. But in Germany, Spain, France, and the rest of the continent, many seem content to have a few drinks and go out and dance. But, as I see it, our problems are:
Drinking culture: We love to get drunk.
Lack of public trans: You almost always HAVE to drive somewhere
Freedom of driving before freedom to drink. You can go off in a car and sneak away from your parents and get drunk.
So lowering the drinking age to 18, I think would help little. We are a spread out country, so I think it would be difficut to remove driving from the equation. But so are canadians. But my basic point is that drinking at 21 or a 18 isn’t very different, so I guess on those arguments that it should be lowered.
But I think it is only stupid parents who don’t allow thier kids to drink, because they can’t influence them that way. The earlier you introduce a kid to alcohol, the more adjusted he or she will be. Of course that doesn’t have much to do with the overall drinking culture of teenagers. All they want to do is go off and get drunk.
Tough situation, I think.
The Europeans have it nice, I believe, because there’s nothing more relaxing than being able to party without having to worry how you can get back.
You got a cite for that? I’m finding it hard to believe.