Before anyone starts , yes I know there is in theory more opportunity if you are legally allowed to buy beer - I meant that there were more parties, club events and so on
in a lot of countries, mass transportation is a viable way of getting around. I bet you can find that there are only a fraction of the drinking related auto accidents involving young drinkers in places such as Japan, China, Europe than the US.
I saw an interesting stat last time I was in the US. It showed that teenage drivers with another teenage passenger had the same accident rate as drunk drivers. Now make that drunk teenagers together in a car, and it’s probably a recipe for disaster. Put 'em on a subway, and there’s a lot less tragedy.
Although I can’t cite anything, I imagine this is certainly true in Central London as most people use the tube or taxis to get about at ANYTIME, nevermind when drunk.
An interesting, but slightly scary, statistic might be how many drunk taxi drivers are around tho… 
I am still interested in what actually happens. I cannot beleive that you can keep teenagers and beer seperate.
Here in the UK the age limit is 18 but there are plenty of pubs and clubs that don’t ask questions, so getting hold of alcohol is not difficult from about 16 onwards. Before that we would get an older boy to buy it for us. Is this what happens in the US?
Also if it is difficult to get hold of alcohol do US teens turn to other intoxicants, specifically marijuana?
I think 18 is about right for drink (given that it really means 16). Mind you I did manange to make a right berk of myself when 18 through drink…
Most underage American college students have fake ID’s, although they occasionally get an older friend to do the buying. Can’t speak for high school students though.
Well, it doesn’t say that, but I do believe another important document states that we are entitled to certain, inalienable rights, among those are “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.” You murdering someone denies them there basic right to life, doesn’t it? So in a way, it does say that you cannot murder someone, since that is denying them their right to life.
Now I ask you, why do you think consuming alcohol is a privilege, not a right? I see privileges as something that have to be earned, one must prove that they are capable. Before you get a driver’s license, you have to prove you can drive a car. When do you prove you can handle alcohol? Never. You turn 21, you can now drink. Very similar to voting. You turn 18, you now can vote.
Now, I believe that if some sort of system was set up to prove that someone can indeed use alcohol properly, I’d be for it. But alcohol is not like a car. In a driver’s test, you prove you know how to drive a car. How do you prove you know how to drink? Do you keep taking shots offered by the instructor until you feel you’ve had enough? Obviously that is not effective, nor would any sort of written test, as people don’t have to follow what they write down.
The question here is, why 21? What makes 21 so different than 18? Maturity seems to be the overwhelming reason, but it is not definite that all 21 year olds are more mature than 18 year olds. In my experience, there seems to very little in change of maturity between the two.
Now, if I may go off on a tangent here. A large reason many people are against alcohol is drunk driving. I feel that our drunk driving laws are not nearly strict enough. I believe that if someone is caught driving over the legal limit, they should loose their license for life, with no chance to get it back. Period. Seems a little strict? Well how would you feel if a drunk driver killed someone you loved because the day he got his license back he went out to celebrate and drive drunk again? Granted, this does nothing to stop those unfortunate people who die when they drive drunk, but the fear of never being able to legally drive is a much stronger deterrent than what is currently in place.
And on another tangent…
WHAT!? Are you daft? Where on earth do you get the idea that most underage college students have fake ID’s? May I see a cite for that, please? Of all the underage college students I know (which is a lot, considering I’m in college) only one has a fake ID. That’s one out of more than a hundred. Less than 1%, which is far from most. Please refrain from making such generalizations.
I spent four years at university in America and I never met anyone who didn’t have a fake ID. Also everyone I met at the two other universities where I had friends had fake IDs. Not all of them used theirs to buy alcohol, some of them just used theirs to get into clubs with their friends even if they weren’t going to drink. So I guess I was just generalising based on my own experience. Sorry!
Oh, here’s a cite which estimates that 50-90% of college students have used fake IDs.
http://www.edc.org/hec/news/hecnews/0828.html
It’s not very reliable, I suppose, but maybe I can find others for you.
my two cents:
Make legal drinking age 18+
Make legal driving age 18+
Not that I want to butt into anyone’s flaming here, but I would say that pennylane’s generalisations seem pretty in line with my own experiences, and I wasn’t in college all that long ago. On my freshman dorm floor alone, of the 90-odd residents it was once tallied that at least 60 had fake IDs (and that’s not even counting the one 22-year old Swiss guy who could drink legally), and this was after only a few months of being at university. The numbers will vary from school to school, but maybe you are the one with the skewed figures, bouv…perhaps you go to St. Olaf’s or something?
However, I don’t think that drunk driving is as big of a deal for college students as it is for high schoolers because generally they don’t drive as much to their destination of inebriation, being more densely collected into dorms and nearby apartments and generally having neighbouring bars, frat houses and the like at their disposal. American high school kids often have to travel all around their school district and beyond for the beer-swilling, and as was pointed out before, in most American cities (and particularly suburbs) public transport is not up to European standards.
Personally, I say lower the drinking age to 18. Won’t solve any problems with drunk driving or drinking to get drunk or alcohol poisoning, but at least it will seem a little less hypocritical–one is mature enough to vote, get drafted (theoretically) and such, but not buy alcohol? (not that I win any points on originality there) Or maybe, to pull in some ideas from a nameless Doper who started another thread, we should think about poisoning the alcohol supply at the 7-Elevens near high schools? (I refuse to use one of those winking faces, but felt the need to have this parenthetical so that people not familiar with the thread reference don’t think me mad)
Pennylane, France has became very serious in the past couple of years for both speed limit and driving drunk. I can assure you, you will get stopped if you get out of a club on the road leading to it… I speak from experience, thank God I am usually the sober one driving!
I posted about the consequent problems of this that occur in South Africa where these are the legal ages:
I posted above about the consequent problems of this that occur in South Africa where these are the legal ages:
'ppologies for the double post!!
Gp
Carine, I am not sure really I understand the line about getting out of a club, but I have yet to see how serious the French authorities are about cracking down on reckless/drunk driving, at least in the Paris area. This particularly applies to motor vehicles with two wheels, as one can find madmen leaving the bars and speeding through crowds of people as if they are trying out for a part in the next James Bond flick. I know from my friends in the suburbs that it is even worse out there on weekend nights.
Still, having said this, I still say that the fact that the population density of Europe necessitates better public transportation is an extremely positive factor. It obviously won’t stop those for whom life is a Lou Reed lyric, but I really think there are too many American teens that only drive drunk/ride with drunk drivers because it is the only alternative (other than staying home and playing interactive SpudMaster 3000X ® all night instead of going to the teen beer troth, of course).
Still, I do love the word “still” to death. Literally.
Er, sorry…
i live in england where i think the laws are reasonable enough, under 18s can still drink at parties or whatever but cant get into pubs or clubs.
when i was 14 i went on a French exchange an suddenly realised i could buy alcohol legally. my friends and i got totally pissed every night, but all the french people we were with just didnt understand what all the fuss was about. they had been drinking watered down wine as a matter of standard at meals since they were kids. there was just nothing special about it to them, if there is any way of inputting this kind of ethos into american society then all the better.
one of the main reasons people are so immature about drinking in america is because they are introduced to it so late, of course if you only start drinking at 16 then you probably wont treat it maturely till you are 21. but if you start at 10 (and i DONT mean hardcore getting totally drunk, but drinking a little with meals under parental supervision) then 18 year olds would be able to deal with the responsibility.
my point is that people will get the alcohol anyway, there is no way to stop people ever even drinking it, so maybe the best idea would be make it legal for people to drink it but not to buy it. then people would grow up with it and treat it as the norm, and not want to get pissed for the sake of getting pissed.
or is this just wishful thingking? 
Dilbert: The only reason that 18 is selected as the age to be an adult is that is the age that most people graduate from high school.
pld: I . . . do not think that this is true. I would like to see a cite for this, please.
Dilbert: Maybe I should have made it more clear that I was hypothesizing why I think the age was set the way it is. It’s an argument that I hear a lot and I have yet to find a better reason.
Way I heard it, the real reason is that during the extremely controversial Vietnam War, there was widespread public anger at the fact that while young men didn’t attain their legal majority (and hence the right to vote) until age 21, they could be drafted for military service starting at 18. As an article commemorating the 30th anniversary of the 26th Amendment (which lowered the voting age to 18) notes,
So the reason that 18 was chosen for the age of legal majority is simply that it was already the age of draft eligibility, and public opinion felt strongly that the two should go together. As for why 18 was the age of draft eligibility, it hasn’t always been: the Conscription Act of 1863, during the American Civil War, made men eligible for military conscription at 20, though the age of legal majority was 21. (Volunteers were allowed to enlist at 17.) The Selective Service Act of 1917 made men eligible for conscription at 21, and a new act in 1940 lowered that age to 18. The purpose seems to have been to get as big a pool of eligible young males as possible for military recruitment. Was the cutoff age chosen to enable boys to graduate from high school before being drafted? I don’t know, but I kind of doubt it; what percentage of American boys stayed in school till the age of 18 in 1940, anyway?
While I generally agree with what you’ve been saying here, Phil, the 21st Amendment makes it fairly clear that there is no general constitutional right to drink alcohol. The states may prohibit it.
Well, see, there you go! I guess that answers the question.
[sub]One day, I will learn to keep my yap shut on matters of law.[/sub]