I would welcome them too. But, in their absence, there is nothing preventing us from realizing that adolescents seek to emulate adults.
So what? I haven’t speculated that the cause is rebellion against parental authority though now that you bring it up I would say that’s a factor for some. And rebellion against authority in general is a likely factor as well.
Again, rebellion against authority isn’t my argument. I’m saying that making alcohol consumption an accoutrement of adulthood gives adolescents incentive to drink while at the same time preventing parents from ( legally ) allowing their children to experience alcohol in controlled situations.
But still, how old are you? I work in the business and I can tell you that there is a major focus on preventing underage drinking. Sure bars/resturants/merchants want to make money off alcohol. Which they won’t be able to do if they lose their liquor license. I don’t know what a passable fake ID costs these days but I do know that states have instituted policies to make them more difficult to aquire. The policies don’t always make sense though. Here in Penna they had the idea of printing the driver’s licenses of people under 21 vertically so that you have to turn the card sideways to read it. Great idea except that these IDs don’t expire when people turn 21.
What’s that? Irresponsible drinking in another nation with a drinking age?
I (apparently, since I’m only 18) cannot speak from a “mature” perspective. I can speak from the perspective of an 18 year old college student.
The vast majority of college students - regardless of age - drink. There are plenty of 21-or-over upperclassmen (at my school, even freshmen) who have no qualms whatsoever about making a beer/whisky/gin/vodka/etc run for those of us who aren’t 21. At my school, they check IDs at college-sponsored parties. They ignore non-college-sponsored parties. If you walk up to a security officer while swigging straight from a can of Tecate, then yes, you’re risking having your beer taken away. Other than that, pretty much everyone has more important things to do. At student-run parties, no one cares about ID when you walk up to the bar. You’re old enough to be at a college party, no one’s going to stop you if you want to drink.
A significant percentage of the 18-21 age bracket, mostly college students, drinks irresponsibly. I think a lot of this is, for a lot of us, we’re away from the restrictions of home for the first time, so we can have one or two drinks. And after those, it gets a lot harder to remember why, exactly, you’re not just going to keep drinking. In my experience, peer pressure is less of a factor than many people make it out to be. It’s more an issue of self control than anything else, and I will willingly say that the majority of college students in that age bracket do not have impeccable self-control.
Drinking at, for example, a party, can be far more dangerous than drinking at, say, a bar or nightclub. I don’t have much personal experience with this (as I’ve never been to a bar or club, and any sort of crime whatever is something that just doesn’t happen on my campus), but I do have second-hand evidence, through friends. One major factor I’m surprised no one’s mentioned is that at a ‘professional’ establishment, someone is drastically less likely to be stoned. I don’t want to turn this into a debate about marijuana: I’m simply stating that yes, it does impair your judgement to a certain degree. And there are, for sure, going to be someone sober around - a bartender, say - at a ‘real’ place, who will cut you off if you’ve gone too far. I’ve gone to parties with friends and played the sober friend, telling people they’ve had enough and taking them to bed. If want to have a drink, though, or whoever else who’s fulfilling that role? Then you lose your safety net.
Parties are fun. If 18-year-olds are allowed to go drink in bars, we’re still going to do most of our drinking in on-campus parties. Why? Well, for one, it’s cheaper. At least at my school, you can contribute however much you want to the ‘party of the week’ fund. You can give nothing, if you’re broke that week. Then you go to the party, drink however much you want, and have fun. It’s a social gathering, yoou and your friends, loud music, etc. It’s fun, and a very different experience than anything else.
What’s my point? I honestly believe it doesn’t much matter if they move the drinking age, or the buying age, or whatever. 18-, 19-, 20-year-olds are still going to drink, still going to party, and still going to be irresponsible. I’d bet it’s not going to affect the number of drunk-driving accidents with any statistical signifcance. It’ll be protested by any number of special-interest groups (MADD comes to mind, for one), people will get angry. College students who are over 21 will be relieved because they’ll get hit on for beer runs less often. Most in the 18-21 age bracket will look at their new freedom, use it a couple times - go get drunk in a bar once or twice just to do it at 18 years old, for example - and then resume their partying with friends.
I would say that you are in denial. It is not my belief that “It’s not dangerous for me to drive drunk.” More correct would be “it is dangerous for me to drive drunk, and it is dangerous for me to drive sober.” Driving is dangerous under any circumstances, whether or not you deny it. We are not talking about an elimination of danger; we are talking about varying degrees of it. If I can follow the rules of the road and not put you in any MORE danger than everyone else on the road is, does it matter if I am drunk? If I cannot, does it matter if I am sober? Either way, I am responsible for my decisions and my behavior. If I swerve out of my lane and kill your family, the crime is in that act, not in the beverage I drank before it. If drinking the beverage led to the action, it is still the action that is criminal and not just general driving or drinking.
You are reading an arrogance into my position that is not there. While I can tell you that driving drunk does not make me particularly more dangerous than anyone else on the road, trying to talk on the phone does and for that reason I avoid it. If I kill someone because I was concentrating on the phone, I am still just as responsible as I would have been if I weren’t on the phone.
And I am responsible for making these decisions and the consequences of them. If I start talking on the phone a lot while driving and therefore having a bunch of wrecks, I should be dealt with no more or less seriously than you should if you start driving drunk and having wrecks.
The focus on drinking deflects from the importance of personal responsibility. That’s all I’m saying. I am not campaigning for every one to have a few drinks in the car.
What do you mean, “never mind states”? We have them; they exist; how does one “never mind” them?
I don’t think you understood my point. The areas are much, much larger than in most other developed countries. You understand that it is much more difficult and expensive to build public transportation when you have to cover a much larger area, right? Manhattan has an excellent subway system, because Manhattan is a finite size. San Francisco has good public transportation, because San Francisco is of finite size. Unfortunately, cities such as those are only tiny fractions of the entire state in which they are located, and not everyone lives in the heart of the city.
Yeah it probably would. But they can’t do that a lot of the time.
And if I had wings, I could fly. But that’s not the case.
Where I am (as with much of the U.S.) being underage and drinking is a pain. I can get drunk in my own apartment but I know a lot of people who can’t just walk down the street to the bar so they drive or walk all the way to our place to party and drink. Driving from my place while drunk is prohibited but more than once people have showed up in the driveway already drunk (they’re not allowed here anymore, btw). If the drinking age were lowered there would be less reason for them to drive from small party to small party or all the way across town while partying as they would just be sitting their ass at the bar.
Binge drinking is higher here in the states than our neighbors north of the border and that may be because (though this evidence may be inconclusive), for example, when I go into a place that serves alcohol in Canada I’m rarely if ever carded. Even when I was underage I still could. Nobody cared. Down here in the states I don’t even try. To get in you need everything but a blood sample and a thumbprint. Because of the “oh its awesome because ‘the man’ tries to keep it from me” stigma around alcohol along with the resulting shortage of it that many people under 21 go through I’m not at all shocked that the funnel is the consumption method of choice for many college students. I personally like to sit back and have a few beers (several at most, to the point where I’m “ok, I’d like to go sleep now”, not stumbling around trying not to puke) around people who don’t constantly yell “chug! chug! chug!”. Go to a frat party (the only drinking option for most college students) and that’s all you hear.
I don’t know what Canadian statistics are for drunk driving in the 18-20 age group (the all knowing google isn’t showing me much… I may be too tired to come up with a good search description) but I’d be willing to put money on the possibility that their DWI rates are compareable if not better than here.
You say we shouldn’t lower the drinking age because you don’t believe (contrary to what I’ve just shown above) that the atmosphere around drinking causes binge drinking and drunk driving (after all, nothing above actually proves anything, its all based on my own observations as a college student in the U.S.)? Ok then, for us Americans (or at least only those in the 18-20 age group) our society (what other factors could there be that Canadian teens don’t also have?) reinforces the dumbing down of our basic ability to know when to stop drinking. In other words, us Americans at the ages of 18-20 are not as mature as our 18-20 year old friends to the north.
Denial is an even stronger symptom of meaning what it says. Kind of Orwellian to suggest that both “yes” and “no” as answers to “Are you an alcoholic?” suggest rampant alcoholism, don’t you think?
This is a pretty weak response to a good argument, also. The denial you’re thinking of involves an obvious drunk defensively denying the fact that s/he has a drinking problem. Smartass doesn’t sound like a drunk to me. S/he sounds like a responsible, thinking individual who placed themself in the unfortunate situation of driving drunk, and doing it a lot; and came out entirely unscathed. Instead of refuting the argument, you’re deflecting attention from the issue–which is the drinking age and how it affects driving tendencies–to Smartass’s heretofore nonexistent supposed drinking problem.
No, Smartass is saying that 18, being the age at which we consider people adults, is a logical age for said people to begin taking responsibility for firearms and alcohol. Sounds reasonable to me.
If drunk driving is so universally dangerous, shouldn’t your argument against it be able to withstand a logical discussion? It is apparent that, whatever Smartass does or did, he didn’t cause any accidents despite driving drunk on many occasions. Does this not warrant any consideration? I’m not saying that drunk driving should be allowed – as has been said in another context in this thread, we shouldn’t let everyone do what only a few people can pull off – I’m just saying that your (and popular society’s) contention that “drunk driving is always bad” seems to be facing overwhelming evidence to the contrary in this case. It’s noteworthy, as well, that (if I understand the arguments correctly) Smartass is not arguing that he can drive drunk because he’s an exceptionally good driver, but that everyone can drive drunk except unusually bad (irresponsible/less aware) drivers. That’s an extremely important distinction, which you seem not to be making.
Wait, what? I don’t get it at all. Marijuana just came in out of left field. What do you mean by someone is drastically less likely to be stoned? Are you saying that parties are more dangerous drinking environments because people are also smoking pot? That doesn’t make sense, as scientific research has established that marijuana is much less impairing than alcohol: stoned people (in the immediate sense) are better drivers, clearer (and certainly deeper) thinkers and better decision-makers than drunk people. Having people at a party who are just there to smoke pot, and not to drink, is actually a pretty beneficial thing; it means that there are people there who can more safely and more effectively take care of the really drunk people, than other drunk people can. This study (may only be accessible to UA folk; cite info included at the bottom) comparing field sobriety tests (standing balance) and brake latency (reaction time required to stop safely in a braking situation) between drunk drivers, stoned drivers, and drivers both drunk and stoned, concluded that although marijuana can cause people to fail standing balance tests, it actually did not affect brake latency. As reaction time is doubtless one of the most important aspects of driving, this is pretty important as it shows that a stoned partier who abstains from the hooch is as able to react to what s/he sees on the road as a thoroughly dry/sober partier; and thus, having people around who like to smoke pot but don’t like to drink (yeah, they exist, I know several) actually makes the drinking environment safer, at the very least in the driving department.
Unless you mean only violent crime (in which case “any sort of crime whatever” is pretty misleading), I have a feeling you’re greatly deluding yourself. Even if you do mean violent crime, I doubt there’s never been a single one, unless you go to a really, really small school.
Work Cited
Liguori, Anthony. Gatto, Catherine P. Jarrett, David B. Seperate and combined effects of marijuana and alcohol on mood, equilibrium and simulated driving. Psychopharmacology. 2002, Vol. 163 Issue 3/4, p 399, 7 pp.
And the problem with this argument is that the same decrease in drunk driving deaths occurred in Canada at the same time, where the drinking age stayed the same. (Cite on request - I lost all my bookmarks recently.)
No, that’s not even close to what I said. The denial is in thinking that it’s not dangerous for one to drive drunk. Please try to pay attention.
Yes, I could discuss it logically, but the idea that it’s not dangerous to drive drunk is so patently absurd that I don’t want to waste my time with it. I could argue with you over whether the moon is made of green cheese, but the premise is so ridiculous that I wouldn’t even bother with it.
I drove home drunk quite a few times (during my 18-21 years of age) and never got in an accident either, but I can’t even be sure if I was the cause of someone else’s accident each time I drove home because of my over-compensating tunnel vision when I was drunk. Just because I made it home safe doesn’t mean I didn’t affect someone else’s life(lives) each time I drove. Thankfully, I don’t subject myself or others to this practice anymore. Can anyone else who’s drunk and drives home be even remotely aware of this either?
I am quite sure that I did not cause any accidents. That is to say, I’m as sure of that as I am of anything else.
Personally, I don’t see any point in this wandering off into a discussion of my driving habits. I presented myself as an example (a set of data points, if you will), not a model.
To me, one issue is at what age do you want “society” to treat people as adults. Another issue is, once they are adults, do you want to hold them responsible for the results of their decisions, or do you want to make their decisions for them?
To me, the furor about drunk driving is about placing micromangement above personal responsiblity. If I swerve out of my lane and kill you with my car, am I “more guilty” if I am drunk than if I am sober? I would say that I am equally as guilty either way. The law says different.
One thing that may have been different about my drunk driving: I was always keenly aware of the potential damage that a moving vehicle can inflict, and I did not feel like being impaired was a good “excuse” to kill myself or anyone else. Perhaps the fact that I was in a pretty severe car wreck a few years earlier gave me perspective, if not necessarily better judgment. I was not racing up and down the road, laughing hysterically. I was concentrating on making it safely home and following all the rules of the road in the process.
For what it’s worth, I have also never awakened to find my car parked “crooked” or in the wrong spot. It was always right where it was supposed to be. Once, a friend followed me home and was shocked at the way I could stay perfectly in my lane on the road, but could barely find a path to the door once I was out of the car. (“I have to drive: I’m too drunk to walk.”) This part I don’t presume to be able to explain, other than to say that people are different. Which is why I’m not crazy about turning society into a micromanager.
Does it not make more sense to insist that everyone follow the rules of the road than to try to predetermine how they go about it?
Well, with that logic I guess the state/federal authorities should just give you an exemption to all drinking age statutes and driving statutes… :rolleyes:
So, what you’re saying is, you are more concerned about my mental state than you are about whether I drive in my lane and stop at red lights?
When I was 18, I was driving over to a friend’s house some time after 10:00 at night. About half way there, I passed a cop. He saw that I was yound and driving a sports car, realized it was late at night, and decided I must be “up to something”. So he followed me. For about 15 minutes. During that time we were both passed by an old beat up land yacht with no headlights or tail lights. Approaching an intersection, the land yacht swerved in front me, slammed on its breaks, and turned off onto a side road. I looked back in my mirror and saw that the cop was still right behind me–he never even slowed.
A few seconds later, he turned on his lights and pulled me over. My tag renewal was a week overdue (I had the sticker but had not put it on yet). He was probably 21 years old. He talked to me like I was an idiot and gave me a ticket for having an expired tag.
My logic is not all that difficult to follow. If you want the roads to be safer, does it not make sense to punish people who are doing dangerous things with their cars? Seriously, you can theorize all you want to about things that someone might do in various different states, but since when is our standard logic to punish people for things that they might do? If I am drunk, I indeed may be more likely hit someone with my car. But where is the logic of punishing me as if I already have done it?
If I am drunk in a bar, I am probably more likely to get in a fight. Should we punish everyone we catch drunk in a bar because of this? Should we go ahead and add on domestic abuse as well? How 'bout resisting arrest? At what level do you draw your line in the sand about punishing people for things they might do?
If you’re cited for driving under the influence, you’re not being punished for something you might do, you’re being punished for something you have done – namely, gotten drunk and behind the wheel of a car. That, in and of itself, is a crime.
You are not being punished “as if you have already” hit another car, because should you also hit a car and cause damage to property or people, that will be another crime that you would be punished for.
But in and of itself, it doesn’t harm anyone. I believe Smartass’s point is that we shouldn’t criminalize something merely because it might lead to harm somewhere down the road (so to speak).
Reckless endangering the lives of others is and should be a crime. The fact that you didn’t happen to kill anyone this time doesn’t let you off the hook for putting other peoples lives in danger.
Why not “possess” a firearm while driving that same vehicle…it’s not harming anyone. How about “possessing” a kilo of coke in the same vehicle while we are at? It’s not harming anyone either. Let’s round it all off with a pound of high grade explosives. It shouldn’t be criminalized merely because it “might” lead to harm somewhere down the road, so to speak…
Yeah, that logic sounds good to me. :eek:
Oh, there’s also that sample of small pox I meant to show the fellas back at the bar…
There’s an argument to be made for that too, but you won’t hear it from me. I’m just interpreting Smartass’s post.
I don’t get this part, though. Cars and firearms, sure, but how is a kilo of coke any more dangerous in the hands of a drunk? Is it laced with nitroglycerin?
Thousands of people aren’t killed every year in bar fights and domestic abuse situations. Thousands of people are killed every year in drunk driving accidents. That’s the line in the sand.
Under your logic, someone with severe epilepsy would be allowed to drive a car. After all, they’re not hurting anyone… yet. A convicted pedophile would be allowed to run a daycare center. They’re not hurting anyone… yet. Someone without a medical license would be allowed to practice surgery. After all, they might actually wind up doing it correctly, even without any training.
The problem with this line of logic is that certain groups of people–in this case intoxicated drivers–happen to be far more statistically likely to commit certain crimes, like vehicular homicide. Making drunk driving a crime deters people from doing it in the first place. Yes, drunk driving in and of itself might not be dangerous, depending on the driver. However, seeing as how drunk drivers are far, far more likely in general to kill someone on the road, it serves public interest to keep as many drunk people off the road as possible. That’s why it’s a crime. If drunk driving was decriminalized, way, way more people would be getting killed. So really, semantics doesn’t matter in this case–what’s important is getting as many incompetent drivers off the road as you can. And no matter how it affects you individually, drunkenness affects driving in general.
I mean that, yes, to some degree, being stoned imparis judgement. If someone’s stoned to begin with, they’re perhaps more likely to misjudge how much they can safely drink.
. I go to a school with a total student body of 400. So, yes, I’m fairly certain that there is very, very little crime of any sort.