The US drinking age should go back to being 18.

Here’s why I think this, and my reasons are pretty anecdotal, so that’s why I’m not in GD with this. I came of age the year before the drinking age was raised to 21, so I was “legal” when a lot of my peers were not. When you are old enough to vote, marry, serve in the military or sign up for the draft, give legal consent, and smoke, it stands to reason that legal drinking would be part of that package. It still seems strange to me that one adult privilege would be separated from all the others be three years instead of being conferred at 18 like everything else.

IMHO, the higher drinking age also sets up a situation where (finally!) being “legal” is such a big deal, that binge drinking becomes the norm for younger type folks. Hearing about someone dying from alcohol poisoning after drinking 21 shots on their birthday is not an extremely rare occurrence. It seems to me that if the drinking age was not separated out from other adult rights, this type of situation would be less common. When legal drinking is so long-awaited, the “rite of passage” for the *only * right to be conferred at 21 not at 18, tends to be exciting and dangerous. It seemed as if, when I was 18, it was not such a huge deal. Turning 21 didn’t have any huge significance on me like it did to my slightly younger peers.

Anybody else feel the same way? (especially oldsters like me who remember when 18 really meant “legally adult”.
:slight_smile:
IMHO.

In UK it’s 18 but for some stupid reason it’s 16 for smoking.

Anyway, you tend to get lots of 15 year olds drinking because the limit is 18.

Not too long ago, in the middle of the afternoon, I saw a sober 18 y/o run a red light and T-bone a pickup truck.

How many more of these kinds of accidents would I see if drinking at 18 was legal? I have an 18 y/o daughter, very mature for her age, yet still lacking in judgement in some areas. For the record, I don’t forbid her to drink, and I’ve offered her tastes of some alcoholic beverages. She doesn’t like them. Fine by me. But there’s no mystique there for her.

DUI aside, how many more kids will wind up drunk on spring break falling off balconies? Or face down in swimming pools? Or waking in a strange bed with a strange partner wondering what the hell happened?

These things already happen to the legal drinking set - do younger, often less-responsible individuals deserve that same right? Immaturity is not only a matter of age, but it’s the best we can do for now, isn’t it? I have no magic answer, but I wish I knew how to change attitudes about drinking vs getting drunk. That, to me, is the biggest issue.

No, you get a lot of 15 year-olds drinking because everybody’s stupid at age 15. It’s no different here, where the drinking age is 21.

(ftr, I wholeheartedly support underage drinking. Just not THAT underage) :slight_smile:

Either the drinking age should be lowered to 18, or the age of majority (voting, signing contracts, getting married, serving in the military, etc.) should be raised to 21.

I really don’t care which way you go, but we should pick one or the other.

I guess I’ll be the in the minority here, but I think the drinking age should be raised to 40 or so.

The Griffin, the reason you get 15 year olds drinking here is that the legislation isnt taken seriously enough and is often not enforced. In the US many/most places card routinely, when my g/f’s parents were there last summer (both mid 40s) they say that even they were asked for ID in most places. Here in the UK I have been asked for ID about 10 times or so in my life (from the age of 15, when I started drinking).

Also, whilst the legal age for buying/consuming alcohol in a public house or off license is 18, it is legal for any person over the age of 5 to consume alcohol in a private dwelling with parental consent (although obviously allowing young children to become intoxicated would bring intervention from social services). Also, the minimum drinking age for beer and cider (alcoholic cider, obviously) is reduced to 16 when it is purchased for consumption with a meal in a restaurant.

Not that we don’t have simple laws :rolleyes:

Anyway, back to the point of this rambling post, given how strictly the current 21 age limit for drinking seems to be enforced in the US i can’t really see a problem with underage drinking developing to the extent that it has in the UK, similarly, IIRC, the age limit in the US applies everywhere, including to drinking inside people’s own homes (always strikes me as something of an irony that in’the land of the free’ the government seeems to meddle more in people’s private affairs than in the UK, but that’s probably just a misconception I have, and I’m sure someone will correct me/pit me for mentioning it).

As for encouraging sexual activity, the US has a very high rate of teen sexual activity anyway (cite ) and a higher level of teen pregnancy, most probably due to the lack of a sensible sex education policy (‘thou shalt not’ seems to be the prevailing message on that front, and yes, I acknowledge that the UK has high teen pregnancy rates as well, just not as high as the US [5% in the UK compared to 10% in the US I think, although google is being particularly unhelpful in providing me with a useful cite])

Equally I would agree with BrotherCadfael that it seems ridiculous that a person can be sonsidered responsible enough to cast an informed vote on the future of the country, but not to have a beer with friends.

Please don’t take this post as criticism of the US, rather the view of an outsider of some things that seem odd about the puritanical attitude to alcohol that seems to exist there.

I’m from Holland. Legal drinking age is sixteen.

We are not an nation riddled with alcoholism, accidents and other misery. The age is 18 for driving by the way. We all went to the pub when we were 15. We drank, got drunk, did silly things, had a great time, got over it, grew up responsible adults, mostly. :slight_smile:

FairyChatMom, eighteen in Holland is a perfectly normal age to move out of the house and live on your own, let alone drink. I completely lacked judgement on all sorts of fronts when I was eighteen, but most “normal” young folk have the good sense not to do stupid things when out drinking. If they do, at that age it is their own responsibility. When are people old enough to have mature judgement? Some never reach that age. But you have to let go and let people make their own decisions at some point including the negative outcomes that this may or may not entail. Eighteen is old enough.

Good post Hybrid.

ggurl, the sad part is that basically, the actions of a large minority of teenaged drinkers has made the rise to a national drinking age of 21 a pragmatic necessity. All your philosophical arguments are valid, but they don’t balance the sad fact that raising the drinking age to 21 reduces highway deaths related to drinking by a statistically signifigant amount. It’s sad, but true.

I swear I previewed :frowning:

runs off to spellcheck dissertation again

I agree. The age limit for drinking is a bit of a joke in some places in the UK. I was a regular at a pub from the age of 16 until I left for university. On my 18th birthday we were at the pub and passed up a note to the d.j that said.

“It’s Gemma’s “19’th” birthday. Can you play…”

The d.j knew my correct age. And we’d been going there for years so he knew I was only just legally allowed to be there. The land lord also knew our ages and we were still served.

It’s interesting to see what the attitudes/laws re: alcohol consumption are in other nations. FairyChatMom, I agree that 18 year olds do stupid things. I also agree that it’s a matter of changing the overall view of alcohol from excess as a matter of course to something more reasonable. I’m definitely not trying to argue with any of that.

It seems, somehow, when an activity is considered “forbidden” by the young, it automatically becomes more enticing. Then it can become secretive and more often than not abused or mishandled. hybrid_dogfish made a point along those lines when observing that the USA, whose public sex education leans more towards abstinence than anything else, has a teenage population that exhibits more sex and pregnancy than another nation that is more liberal in attitude. Of course, I have no statistics offhand that will support a correlation like that, but one could speculate that there is merit to the observation. (Thank goodness this is in IMHO:)) I wonder if allowing a drink now and then at home or with a restaurant meal would take some of the “mystique” out of drinking and reduce the almost suicidal binge drinking activity that seems a prevailing rite of passage n the US.

I guess another main point was the illogic of permitting 18 year olds every adult privilege except that one thing. BrotherCadfael, I totally agree with you. It just makes more sense that way. An 18 year old who just got done fighting for the US Army in Iraq can’t celebrate his homecoming with a beer if he wants to? Come on.

BTW, I rarely drink (1-2 alcoholic beverages a year) and any children of mine, regardless of age, will not drink to excess in my presence if I can help it. I don’t think binge/excessive drinking is ever good and that’s part of my reasoning. Drinking 21 shots is never a good idea, but in a society where legal drinking is postponed long past all other adult privileges, it’s become somewhat of a ritual. A more reasoned approach to drinking might change these trends, not to mention training children for adulthood starting as early as possible. The 18 year old that recklessly ran the stop light may be in that group of kids raised as “large babies” and not expected to take responsibility for anything as long as mom and dad are around to take care of things. I guess that’s a whole different issue though.

I go to college in the states and I see a LOT of binge drinking, including a few near deaths due to it (And I’m only second semester freshman :eek:). The Canadian universities I’ve visited don’t seem to have that problem. When the pressure of the law inforcement is off the students not to do it the only real reason to drink yourself stupid every weekend is if you really wanted to… which people don’t when there’s nothing devient about it.

Worst possible accidental smilie location ever.

Doubtful. The Beeb just ran an article on the UK’s issue with binge drinking. It appears that binge drinking just starts at a lower age.

I’m sorry but there are tons of things that are forbidden and the fact that they are forbidden does not make them more attractive.

How about murder. It’s forbidden! It must be pretty sweet!

How about voting? Do you see 15 year olds faking IDs to get into the voting booth?

The idea that the kids want to drink ‘just because it’s forbidden’ does not really hold water.
Now there are tons of things that make drinking seem attractive to kids. It seems grown-up, it will make hot chicks have sex with me, it’s something that my friends will dare me to go into the 7-11 and buy and I’ll look cool if I get it. Adults look cool drinking in ads and in movies so it must be cool.

Those things make drinking attractive to kids, not so much the ‘it’s forbidden’ idea.

Beware though, they define binge drinking as “roughly four pints of ordinary-strength beer or one bottle of wine [for men]. For women, it means three pints or two-thirds of a bottle of wine.” That’s lowering the threshold for problem drinking to a ludicrously low amount. Practically everyone I know has a drinking problem in those terms.

(for fans of cites click here)

I do believe that culture makes a difference. I have lived in England and am now living in Ireland. Both countries have stricter licensing laws than Holland, both have a legal drinking age of 18. Guess, which of these three drinks least? Make of that what you will.

If they are old enough to take a bullet in the head for my country, I think they should be allowed alcohol.

At the least, make a law allowing those in the service to drink.

You’re either an adult or you’re not. I agree that the US should either lower the drinking age or raise the voting, being a member of the military etc. age. I can’t fathom the type of mind that would find it acceptable for young people to choose who will run their country or to have someone else’s life in their hands as a soldier but you don’t trust them to know how much to drink?

Some people eat too many burgers, some people drive recklessly. Some people are just stupid and take longer to mature than others. That’s just the way life is, but at some point people MUST be considered adults and my view if I was eighteen in the US would be that ‘if my vote has exactly the same weight as your vote and I’m an equal citizen and drinking is legal, well then I’m having a drink if I like’.

It’s an equality issue and it discriminates against supposedly equal citizens based on their age.

Disclaimer: I don’t drink much - maybe one or two drinks a week - hardly excessive so I am not an advocate of drinking to excess. I just think these citizens ahould be given their rights as adults.