A Senator from Vermont has proposed lowering the drinking age to 18 (at the expense of $10 million to Vermont in lost road funds). I find this a very interesting development on the part of the legislature and the citizens of Vermont. This is a hot topic right now, and I was wondering what everyone thought about this.
Personally, I completely support it. I have never understood why it takes more responsibility to drink a beer than it does to kill another person in war, or to vote, or to drive. Of course, drinking alcohol does require certain responsibilities (just like the other things I mentioned) but lowering it I think does not necessarily mean that there are going to be drunken 18-year olds everywhere in Vermont. The simple truth is that making it illegal does not stop it, and probably increases dangerous consumption by making it something that can't be done openly.
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It seems there's also a movement to lower the drinking age in Florida, too. A group there is trying to get enough signatures for a petition to get it proposed.
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No, I don't think it would -- the dividing line remains between high school and college, and I don't think lowering it to 18 would change that too much. Most high school students live at home and it is distinctly more difficult to drink illegally in such a situation. For college kids, it's, well....lots of you went to college, you get the idea.
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In all seriousness, it has always bothered me that the drinking age is over 18. Does being 18 mean one is a legal adult, or not? It seems silly to me that a person is considered an adult by society at 18, able to join the military, yet they are "too young" to make good choices about alcohol.
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Yeah, it tends to make certain people drink for the wrong reasons.
And to the Vermont issues... I thought their non-statutory-rape age is lower too? Or am I making that up?
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As for your question White Whale, I don't think that lowering the drinking age would lower the age at which it becomes acceptable for people to drink illegally. For the moment, with the drinking age set at 21, most people don't really care if someone 18+ drinks because they are aware of how weak the argument for a 21-year old drinking age really is, and so they have little compunction to stop other people from breaking the law or to stop themselves. This is a fact that holds true for all weak laws; if there isn't a good reason for it, people won't respect it.
From a legal standpoint, as another poster here pointed out, you are considered a legal adult at 18. If that's true, then they should be allowed to decide whether or not they should drink. It seems absurdly incogruous to be able to join the military and go to war but not be able to have a drink with the rest of your unit to relax after a stressful day.
That doesn't mean that it will become acceptable for five year olds to be taking shots of vodka. Under 18, you are basically not recognized as a person, so it would make sense that you shouldn't be allowed to drink (since you aren't allowed to have much of a say in what happens to you or sign your own contracts). I think a lower drinking age, with an emphasis on responsibility, would be better than an unrealistic all-at-once approach.
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Another issue that would be brought up if Vermont and Florida (just for example) did change their legal drinking age to 18 would be 18-21 year olds going to Vermont/Florida just to drink legally.
I said I was in Northern NY where Canada is only 45 minutes away. There are plenty of my peers who go to Canada (where the legal drinking age is 18) to drink for the night and then return the next morning.
I think a better solution would be for the national drinking age to be lowered rather than each state taking on the issue.
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I actually think that not only is this a good idea, but that the drinking age should be lowered to below the driving age. Sort of...
Recently there's been a trend toward graduated licensing, for young drivers. The idea being that you have to let the young drivers accumulate experience, but don't allow them to drive during periods that are more dangerous, particularly night time.
Why shouldn't drinking be the same way? As it is, kids get their driver's license first, and become acccustomed to driving, and then they get their "drinking license" and have no experience at all in combining the two. Since drinking is a novelty, they also binge, because suddenly it's "legal". It seems to me that it's a lot safer to allow someone who can't drive to drink under controlled circumstances, so that they can learn the effect of alcohol on their bodies before they get a driver's license.
Now, for a controlled experience: You read in the paper every once in a while that the parents of a teenager provides alcohol for their children (and often their childrens' friends), in order to give their child the opportunity to "learn how to drink" or some such. Usually the reason you read about it is that these parents are probably alcoholics themselves, trying to rationalize their beliefs with a fairly logical argument. Yeah, except because they're alcoholics, it gets out of hand, and the police are called.
So how about if the police, and substance abuse counselors actually do it right? Teen agers could go to a bar, with their parents' permission, where they are checked at the door to be sure they have a safe ride home. The "bouncers," bartenders, and other staff are all substance abuse officers with the police department. There are breathalyzers present, so that drinkers get checked to see how quickly they are beyond the DUI limit. You could even design video games that test for reflex responses and correlate it to B.A.C level, to show that you don't "drive better when you've had a few." Teenagers could drink, under supervision, hang with their friends, and then get picked up by a parent (also checked with said breathalyzer) and go home safely.
This should all happen before they get their licenses, so they kind of get the novelty of drinking out of their system. The unsupervised drinking age would still be higher than the driving age, maybe even still 21.
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Something that bugged me then and bugs me now - I started working the day I turned 16 and was immediately taxed every week, but I couldn't vote for two more years. Wasn't taxation without representation one of the reasons we revolted?
Let working teens vote. Or don't pull payroll taxes until they can.
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Glenn, I think many parents practice this graduated approach, actually. I know my parents allowed us to have wine with dinner, and to talk about how it made us feel, etc. I wish they had done it more, and I think I will do that with my kids. At some point, they will experiment, so why not actually take the time and teach appropriate use? I am forty-one, and I don't know if it was just the people I knew, but drinking and driving were never really an issue. I don;t remember there ever being a designated driver, or even the thought of one, until I was into my twenties. i think this was when MADD sarted having real power, and the DUI laws got extrememly strict all over the country. Now, kids are raised with the idea that the two activities do not match well.
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It is not always the alcoholic parents who get busted for providing a safe drinking environment. Sometimes it is merely because a parent cannot stand the fact that other people's children are having fun, much less doing so in a safe, monitored environment, and calls the (morality) police.
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And yet teenage drinking and driving is still a major cause if highway fatalities.
BTW, yes, a lot of parents practice this, even though it's illegal. But the ones who really shouldn't are the ones that wind up in the newspaper. That's why I recommend creating a safe and legal opportunity.
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I'm all for lowering the drinking age, but no one's mentioned the best argument *I've* heard for keeping it at 21, which is that there's a better chance of brain damage to younger kids because they haven't fully developed yet.
Of course, I also believe this is easy to avoid if a kid (like all adults should) just drinks responsibly.
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What are the figures on teen driving deaths before the states changed to 21 and the rates after?
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Coming from a place where over fifty percent of traffic accident fatalities involve alcohol, and most of teenagers, I agree with Glenn.
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quote: What are the figures on teen driving deaths before the states changed to 21 and the rates after?
I don't have stats, but they went down initially, and then went back up, but are still below where they were with the drinking age at 18. Still most drunk driving deaths involving drivers less than 21 involve alcohol.
Edit: Duh! Most deaths involving drivers less than 21 involve alcohol.
[ April 01, 2005, 06:39 PM: Message edited by: Glenn Arnold ]
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There is no national drinking age. There is a law that removed federal funding from any state whose drinking age is under 21, so by default there is a federal standard (which, honestly, makes me surprised that Vermont is considering changing it), but no actual law.
Prior to this (which was when...the 80s sometime?) each state had its own drinking age -- when my parents were in college, MD was 21 and MI was 18; my dad couldn't drink in college but my mother could.
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quote: In many countries in Europe, the drinking age (for beer anyway) is 16.
They don't have insane alcohol problems.
AFAIK, they also don't have lots of teenage drivers. I propose, that if the drinking age is to be lowered to 18, the legal driving age be raised to the same.
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Glenn, your idea of stepping into drinking in order to promote healthy habits is spot on, but the scenario you presented is unrealistic. Beyond the sheer expense of it (training all those personnel, obtaining the breathalyzers, and developing the video games) the logistics problems would be too much for anyone to want to handle just to let teenagers have a beer. That's not to say that an ideology of gradual acclimatization won't work better than the current position of abstaining completely from alcohol until you finally reach the magic age of 21 and are able to know exactly how to handle it.
Leonide, as far as the brain development argument goes, there are enough surveys out there to claim almost any position. Some reputable scientists claim that brain development completes at thirteen, others say it ends at forty. The fact is, we don't really know. But 18 year olds have been drinking (some, heavily) since the age was set at 21, and there have been no reports to my knowledge linking those who drank to an increase in brain damage. (And, to be realistic, if anyone drinks enough alcohol they can damage themselves, regardless of age - and many do.)
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If a parent allows his/her child to drink in their own home, under their supervision, that is legal. At least it was in MI when I was growing up. It is a common misconception that that is illegal, but it isn't.
quote: AFAIK, they also don't have lots of teenage drivers. I propose, that if the drinking age is to be lowered to 18, the legal driving age be raised to the same.
Well I wasn't advocating lowering it to 16. Just showing that a low drinking age and alcohol problems among teens arent always related.
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Jebus, I think you made an excellent point. Is it true, though, that Europeans have a lower rate of alcoholism?
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quote: If a parent allows his/her child to drink in their own home, under their supervision, that is legal.
Goes state by state. In many states it is expressly illegal provide alcohol to minors, period. I'm pretty sure that no state allows a parent to provide alcohol to their childrens' friends.
quote: Beyond the sheer expense of it (training all those personnel, obtaining the breathalyzers, and developing the video games) the logistics problems would be too much for anyone to want to handle just to let teenagers have a beer.
Alcohol is amazingly profitable. And comparable to the drug trade in terms of the effort people will make to acquire it. The alcohol would pay for the the expenses. It might even be a moneymaker for law enforcement.
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