As I understand it, the reason the age was raised back to 21 after that experimental stint with 18 was that accidents and fatalities shot up. It was thus considered a failed experiment.
I read the information in Dying to drink, which should be available in your friendly neighborhood library. It was near the end of the book.
[QUOTE=Zebra]
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!QUOTE]
Actually, in “gang culture,” murder IS in fact pretty cool. So is prison, believe it or not.
It’s all in the culture. Is it cool? Is it required, to be cool? Does everyone else do it? What are its associations?
I second the idea that if I’m old enough to operate a motor vehicle, to vote for politicians, and to die for my country, I’m old enough to have a beer. Either I can make responsible decisions, or I can’t. What’s the diff?
IIRC there is no national drinking age in the US. Any state is free to set its drinking age to 18 or 16 or 3 if it wants. The reason states don’t is because under federal law if any state doesn’t set its drinking age to 21 it loses out on millions of dollars in federal highway money. Sort of the reverse of an unfunded mandate, and something that our resident Federalists ought to be, but somehow aren’t, up in arms about.
The feds have a similar trick in place regarding what constitutes “intoxicated.” They have no power to make the states set a legal limit or to set a national legal limit, so instead they blackmail the states into compliance by threatening to withhold funds to those who don’t comply.
Not true. The federal highway funds blackmail was only used force states to raise the drinking age; neighboring states with different ages ended up with a “bloody borders” situation wherein youngsters would drive to the next state where they could legally drink and wind up driving home again blitzed. Louisiana was the last state to fall into step, fairly recently I might add.
There still remains a good deal of variance in the legal limits, though.
I can honestly say that I’m a much more responsible drinker because I learned to do it when I was younger and lived in the UK; it doesn’t have that taboo appeal which draws American kids into doing it. Gemma’s post was also absolutely correct- 18 is really just a “suggestion” in Britain, because 90% of the time if you can see over the bar the barman will serve you.
I think comparing murder and drinking age is a bit of a stretch. Murder is not somthing you are allowed to do legally past a certain age where as drinking is.
Kids drink underage because they want to see what the big deal about it is. If if had been treated with some sort of rationality here in the US from the very beginning, we probably would not have the drinking related problems that we have (IMO, no cite). Because drinking is witheld until the age of 21, minors will drink when they can and as much as they can, hence the 'weekend warrior" drinker. I knew plenty of kids like that in high school, but my parents never acted all uptight about drinking. They offered to let me try drinks at home. I could have a beer at home by the age of 16*, but I was not allowed to drive anywhere after that for a number of hours. My parents taught me responsibility about drinking and taking responsibility for my actions. I think there needs to be more of that but, anyway…
If the drinking age were lowered back to 18, there would be a lot of problems initially, but eventually it would level off. There will always be stupid people and they will always do stupid things regardless of what the laws are and what age they are.
*By the way I now am 27 so i would not be affected by raising or lowering the drinking age… unless they raised it ot 40- then i would be pissed 
I see no reason why a drinking age of 18 wouldn’t be as safe and enforceable as a drinking age of 21. I’m all for it – if, and only if, we raise the minimum driving age to 21.
It’s only fair, not too mention logical to have a single age of majority.
This country needs more than anything a responsible, healthy, non-excessive attitude towards alcohol. Then it can get the drinking age to eighteen so I can buy some irish cream when I want it. (I look 21 according to some, but my ID still says I’m nineteen.)
I agree with the OP, and I’m a couple of years older. 21 is ridiculous. Someone wants us all to live in a perpetual Victorian childhood.
I was one of the people who campaigned back in the late 60-early 70s to lower the voting and drinking ages to 18. My argument was simple. We could get drafted, or married, but we couldn’t buy a beer? Come on!
Sadly, my generation won the right to drink, and then promptly foreited it.
“By the early 1980’s, overwhelming evidence emerged that laws enacted in the early 1970’s to lower the drinking age had resulted in a sharp increase in alcohol-related traffic fatalities among youth. In those States that subsequently reinstated the 21 drinking age in the late 1970’s, reductions in these fatalities were realized (Wagenaar, 1981). The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has estimated that the age 21 laws have saved more than 13,000 lives since States started raising the minimum drinking age. While the minimum drinking age law changes did not stop teenage drinking and driving, they made it more difficult for those under 21, and especially those under 18, to obtain alcohol.”
Here’s the full cite.
http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/Misc/driving/s10p2.htm
So, in a classic test of whether expanding individual rights could negatively impact society, we individuals failed. Maybe I should have spent my time campaigning to RAISE the draft age to 21.
Perhaps GenX or the Millennials would have handled the responsibility better. But looking back it, I rather doubt it.
Agreed. I would prefer to go to eighteen, personally, but on the caveat that if it were lowered to that age, that the driving age be raised to 18 or maybe even 20 and that there be stricter laws for operation of a motor vehicle.
A few thoughts on drinking in Europe vs. America, and so on:
Europe’s drinking culture may well be somewhat healthier than America’s. (I say may and somewhat, since I wasn’t any too impressed with what I saw when I lived there, either. The primary thing that turned me off drinking for life was my time in Denmark.) The general feeling toward drinking in America, esp. for young people, seems to be more extreme than in Europe–either you drink a whole lot, or you don’t drink at all. Moderation seems to be easier to come by in Europe.
It’s easier to drink and not drive in Europe. In general, people drive less, there’s more public transportation, cities are more closely populated, and it’s often very easy to call a cheap taxi to drive groups around. AFAICT, it’s more likely that even smaller towns will have a disco or other nightspot that is easy to get to. Plenty of Europeans don’t have to think about getting a designated driver or taking car keys away from friends.
Americans, OTOH, drive all the time, and parties are more likely to be at a home or out in the middle of nowhere. Small towns frequently have nowhere for young people to go. Cabs, public transport, and nightspots within walking distance are all rarities.
So I don’t think it’s very helpful, really, to try to compare drinking ages in the two and come to the conclusion that we ought to change the laws to 18 in the US. The entire surrounding culture makes that a worse idea than it is in Europe, and we’ve already seen evidence that it doesn’t work well here. As kunilou pointed out, there was a good reason for rescinding the law the first time. Until America changes in a lot of ways, including the whole transportation infrastructure, the reasons for a 21-yo drinking age will be different in the US than the reasons for an 18-yo age in Europe.
Sadly, extremism in drinking seems to be getting worse, not better, which gets us into something of a catch-22, doesn’t it?
I don’t know if there’s any truth to this, or if it’s an after-the-fact rationalization, but I read something about the drinking age having a medical reason. This was in a newspaper article about a local 14-year-old girl who nearly died from alcohol poisoning.
The article quoted some “expert”, who said that the portion of the brain that controls a person’s ability to make decisions is not fully developed until about the age of 20. Specifically, it’s the part of the brain that allows a person to think out the consequences of their actions (something teenagers are not known for). So until that part of the brain is fully developed, there is a greater tendency to act impulsively, without ever considering the results of that action.
The “expert” went on to explain that this is the reason you see 35-year-old guys who still behave like teenagers. These are the people who started drinking in their teens, and their still-growing brains were not able to develop properly. So they continue to act impulsively and irresponsibly into their adult years.
But again, this all may be after-the-fact justification.
A few comments:
I feel totally in agreement with the people who make the point that a person who can take a bullet for their country ought to have the right to drink a beer.
I also totally agree that in the US, there is a priority on driving while you’re young, because it cuts the parents loose from the obligation to drive their child. This is just a fact, not a judgement on parents.
I lived in Germany for a while, where they have it backwards from us: drink at 16, drive at 18. To get your license, you must pay for classes and pass rigorous tests that ultimately cost 600-1000 dollars. If you get caught drinking and driving even once, they would take away your license FOR LIFE. Therefore, people truly think of drinking as their right and driving as a PRIVILEGE. We here in the US get it the other way around.
It seems to me that here in America we have to make a choice between the two, and the choice is obvious, given the circumstances. It’s unfortunate, but having kids drive at 16 and drink at 18 is a recipe for death. No one wants to give up the right to drive for even two more years. Therefore, remove the alcohol factor.
So here’s my concluding thought: how about make the legal drinking age 18 for members of the military and their spouses?
I don’t see why everyone holds by the standard that if you can vote and sign up for selective service (when was the last time we had a draft, folks?) you should be able to vote. So you should be able to vote drunk? Do you want even more idiot kids throwing up and passing out everywhere?
Basically, if you’re not 21 and you want liquor, there isn’t an enormous obstacle in your way. Really. If you want it bad enough you can get it. (the same goes for illegal drugs and cigarettes) There were plenty of kids who bragged about showing up to my high school while drunk. The law’s pretty much irrelevant.
I’m not sure if everyone is up on the drinking rules in Finland, but I think they have got it right. Basically, if you’re under 18, you can drink alcoholic beverages if they’re 4.5% (9 proof?)or under. When you turn 18, you can drink alcoholic beverages if they’re 40%(80 proof?) or under. Then when you turn 21, you can drink whatever you want.
I agree with this because I feel that drinking is okay as long as it’s done responsibly. I feel that if as young adults, we learned how to NOT abuse alcohol like how teenagers do today. The key is MODERATION and if young people used moderation with drinking, there would not be as many problems. Also, I don’t think teens should be driving at 16. From a personal standpoint, I didn’t feel responsible enough to be in control of vehicle, and responsible for the lives of the people in the car and in the other cars.
Put me down for lowering to 18 or 19.
However, I find the arguments about voting age/draft age very unconvincing. There is no real reason all these age sshould be linked.
The real reason that the age should be lowered is that ther is no reason for it to be 21 other than lingering Puritanism and Neo-Abolitionists. I have never seen one convincing study that really justifies the increased drinking age. I have seen studies that munge traffic accidents and alcohol together. I have seen studies that show change over time without giving any weight to increased car safety and increased seat belt use. I have seen anecdotal evidence about bad teenage driving like FairyChatMom’s (her anecdote, that is.) None of these has convinced me that raising the drinking age makes me, or teenagers, noticeably safer.
My belief is that the folks who wanted the drinking age raised were against drinking in society, and this was a good step they could make to curb it. They think that drinking is EVIL. It turns people into wifebeating vandalizing maniacs! And gosh, it is much easier to raise the drinking age than to prosecute vandalism and wifebeating, so let’s take some rights away from millions of people. People who have no idea how alcohol will affect them will drink unwisely at first, whether they are 18, 19, 21, or 25. 21 is not a magic age for safe drinking.
The other stupid alcohol policy we have… too many drunk drivers, so what do we do? Lower legal BAC from 0.1 to 0.08. So does that mean that our drunk driving problem is the people who pegged out at 0.09 and got off free before? NO! The problem is people who have multiple convictions at 0.2 and still drive whether they have a license or not! The new law does nothing other than give some social drinkers a criminal record.
Umm… who said anything about selective service? My gripe is that if you can volonteer, and serve in the military, it’s pretty sad that as a group people the age 18-21 have proven they can’t be allowed to drive while they ingest alcohol. Since there would be a huge resistance to the idea of raising the driving age to 18 or 21, attempting to control alcohol is the only other option.
I’m turning 21 in October, but I’ve been legal for the last two and a half years since the legal age is 18 here in Australia. It was 21 until 1974, then it was dropped to 18. Driving age, age of consent, school-leaving age and age at which you can join the armed forces are various ages below 18. The age for basically everything else is 18. (On a side note, I’ve always been fascinated by the fact that you can get killed for this country at 17, but you can’t vote for the people who sent you to war in the first place. That seems even more absurd than not being able to drink while in the service.)
Having two ages of majority makes no sense whatsoever. If you’re considered enough of an adult at 18 to be allowed to leave school, get a job, smoke, have sex, get married, vote, drive vehicles, view films of any classification rating, join the armed forces and do myriad other things, then you’re enough of an adult to be able to drink. In particular, things like driving, getting married, voting for people to run the country and serving in the armed forces (and, for that matter, entering any other profession that may involve risking your life) demand a greater sense of personal responsibility than drinking does.
Teenagers are always gonna drink anyway, regardless of what the law says, and they’re always going to briefly have a phase where they drink a little too much after they finally reach the age of majority. It’s part of the rite of passage. Years ago, young adults would celebrate their rite of passage into adulthood by going out into the wilderness with the tribal elders and killing a wild buffalo or something. These days, they do it by celebrating the adult rights they’ve been given, particularly the right to drink. Delaying the drinking age til 21 would just encourage people to drink even more when they eventually come of age because they’ve been waiting for the legal recognition for so long, especially if they’re old enough to do everything else BUT drink.
On a lighter note, it’s less dangerous to drink 18 shots than 21 shots. 
[QUOTE=Master Wang-Ka]
Yes, but in gang culture murder is not forbidden now is it.
There are good reasons why we gradually grant ‘adulthood’.
After a child can walk do you let the child walk out the front door?
No, because there are plenty of dangers out in the front yard and the street.
When a 16 year learns to drive (most) parents do not let them drive across the country by themselves.
We let 18 year olds into the military so they can join right after HS. Lots of people have no idea what to do with their life and a few years in the military is far better than flipping burgers or flunking out of community college.
We gradually learn to be an adult so we gradually get permission to do adult things.
