***Jophiel: {{I’ve seen folks under 21 get drunk and on average, they get stupider than those over 21. I’m sure there’s exceptions, but if you ask me if I want to attend an evening having drinks with 25+ year olds or 18 year olds, I’d have to put my money on the former and thus avoid getting vomitted on or my car keyed.}}
My own experiences don’t show this. Indeed, the stupidist drunks I’ve seen have tended to be those well over 21–well over 30, in some cases. (I assume they were just as stupid at 18, but I doubt they could have been much MORE stupid.)
***TubaDiva: {{For those of you who didn’t live through this discussion on the AOL Straight Dope Message Board, you do not know why the term ageist inspires such dread.}}
I’m relatively new, so I didn’t. And I don’t think I am one–I’m 35, and my circle of friends ranges from 13 to 50. (And, yes, the 13-year-old is a true friend, not just some kid that I tolerate.)
***Mac: {{You become an adult when you take responsibility for yourself and your actions.}}
But there are plenty of people who NEVER do this–right up to and including the 50 or 51-year-old President of the United States. This definition works in theory–indeed, it’s pretty much what I was trying to get across before–but legally it won’t fly.
(From a later post): {{3) The guy who drinks so much that he gets alcohol poisoning and has to go to the hospital.}}
There was just a case of that at Penn State…and the yahoo in question was celebrating her 21st birthday.
{{8) Did I mention the DUI’s?}}
Every single DUI case–including the ones who managed to make it home without getting caught–that I personally know of involved people well over 21.
{{So do we need to lower the age again NO! Does the military need an exemption to the drinking age NO! We have enough problems to deal with already.}}
Ok, but you could make the point then that the drinking age should be RAISED–to 25, to 30, to whatever–or that alcohol should be banned entirely. No, I’m not a tea-totaler, and I don’t advocate this. My point is that if we are going to have 18-year-olds help run the country (vote) and defend the country–and be subject to conscription under certain circumstances–I can’t see why we should then turn around and say they are two immature to drink. A lot of them ARE too immature to drink, but so are a lot of other people.
I grew up in a rural area, and one of the things I observed was this: instead of drinking in a bar, where there was at least the possibility of some control being exercised, the 18/19/20-year-olds did their drinking in cars parked in fields or gravel pits or wherever. They ended the evening parked in the middle of nowhere–they HAD to drive to get home, and there was nobody around to observe that they were all far too blitzed to do that. I personally would rather have them in the bars. (Yeah, they weren’t supposed to have booze, but it’s not very hard to come up with. Yeah, you could say they were immature to operate that way–and you’d be right–but that doesn’t change the fact that they DID and do operate that way.)
***mangeorge: {{When I was in NYC, in the late 60’s, the legal age for alchohol was 18. My understanding is that it has since been raised to 21.}}
Yeah, as funneefarmer noted, it went from 18 to 19 in the early '80s, and then to 21 when the feds forced the issue. I have no idea what the significance of 19 was–my guess is that it was a response to some well-publicized accident involving a liquored-up 18-year-old. This was also the period when the law was changed to make bars close at 2:00 AM–I understand it had been 4:00 AM or 5:00 AM before that.
I don’t know what age for drinking was most common before the feds got involved. I grew up in Pennsylvania, where the drinking age was always 21. I was in the District of Columbia once when I was 20, and found they had a split age–to buy beer it was 18, and to buy hard liquor or drinks containing it was 21 (I don’t know where wine fell on this scale). I assume that most states had an 18-year-old drinking age back then, but that’s just a WAG on my part.
***aaronp: {{As someone else pointed out, adulthood is generally a cultural phenomenon. Not only does this rite of passage happen at different times in different geographical areas, but many pre-industrialized
countries recognize this closer to puberty than western nations.}}
It’s interesting to note that while almost every US jurisdiction has an minimum age for marriage of 18 without parental consent (the exceptions are Mississippi, which has an age of 17 for males and 15 (yes, 15) for females, Nebraska, which is 19, and Puerto Rico, which is 21) there are a lot of differences in the ages WITH parental (or judicial) consent. The most common age is 16, but there are at least eight states that have lower minimum ages (even states that don’t have lower minimums often grant exceptions if the female is pregnant or has borne a child). Two states–Massachusetts and Kansas–have a minimum age of 12 (yes, 12) for females and 14 for males. (Marriage is one of the few areas left where laws have split ages by gender.) Two states–California and Mississippi–technically have no minimum ages.
These laws go back aways, of course, but they are still on the books. They’re used occasionally, too–last year there was a news report of a 29-year-old male who got his 13-year-old girfriend pregnant, and married her under their state’s (Maryland, I think) pregnancy exception.
Rich Barr
massivemaple@hotmail.com
AOL Instant Messenger: Hrttannl
