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What should the drinking age be?

At what age should people be legally allowed to buy alcohol?


  • Total voters
    78
I'm okay with the drinking age being either 16 or 18. 21 is inconsistent with our other laws, such as voting and military service.
 
Depends on the culture of the state in question. Some are civilized enough to not need limits, others, like my own are quite backwards when it comes to alcohol. In such countries I would probably go for something like 20.
 
My opinion: With the extension of adolesence and the delay of true adulthood that has occurred in the last couple generations, I think any changes should be directed at delaying rights and privliges, not making them happen earlier.

With regards to the argument that "if you can be drafted and can vote, you should be able to drink," I think we should make it all at a higher age.. 21 for all three, at least.

With longer and longer schooling required, people dont really become adults until well into their 20's. Just consider the stats: just 2 generations ago the average age of getting a full time job and getting married was about 19 or 20..now, its about 27. That is saying something for our maturing process and what the role in society should be for late teen's and early 20-somethings.
 
My opinion: With the extension of adolesence and the delay of true adulthood that has occurred in the last couple generations, I think any changes should be directed at delaying rights and privliges, not making them happen earlier.

With regards to the argument that "if you can be drafted and can vote, you should be able to drink," I think we should make it all at a higher age.. 21 for all three, at least.

With longer and longer schooling required, people dont really become adults until well into their 20's. Just consider the stats: just 2 generations ago the average age of getting a full time job and getting married was about 19 or 20..now, its about 27. That is saying something for our maturing process and what the role in society should be for late teen's and early 20-somethings.


However, unfortuantly our military would not be able to exist very well today if it could not enlist soldiers at an age of 18. There is constantly a shortage of soldiers as it is, so we can't afford to only have completely mature soldiers.


I don't have too much disagreement with individuals voting at age 21, but since they could be soldiers at age 18 for the reasons I stated above, that is then problematic.
 
My opinion: With the extension of adolesence and the delay of true adulthood that has occurred in the last couple generations, I think any changes should be directed at delaying rights and privliges, not making them happen earlier.

This would only serve to delay adolescence further into the late 20s. Which is not, I suspect, what you'd like to see happen here.
 
However, unfortuantly our military would not be able to exist very well today if it could not enlist soldiers at an age of 18. There is constantly a shortage of soldiers as it is, so we can't afford to only have completely mature soldiers.


I don't have too much disagreement with individuals voting at age 21, but since they could be soldiers at age 18 for the reasons I stated above, that is then problematic.

True, we'd be short on troops. All the more motivation for our government to be more judicioius in their use :)

It would be in the best interest of youth to not have the option to enlist right out of high school, and get more experience before hand.
 
This would only serve to delay adolescence further into the late 20s. Which is not, I suspect, what you'd like to see happen here.

You are arguing that being able to vote and legally drink would hasten a youth into adulthood? Surely that isnt the case. What's done is done; adulthood has been seriously delayed by other more serious factors.
 
You are arguing that being able to vote and legally drink would hasten a youth into adulthood? Surely that isnt the case. What's done is done; adulthood has been seriously delayed by other more serious factors.

Adulthood has been delayed by our refusal to treat young adults like adults. Nothing more or less.

Let me put it like this. My daughter had her first drink of alcohol at 15. I know this, because she told me about it. I would much prefer that she experiment with alcohol, as a teen, because I can step in and rescue her if need be. Much more stupid would be for me to allow her to go off to college with no sense of internal boundaries on the subject.

Externally imposed boundaries DON'T WORK. The overwhelming majority of teens start drinking at 15-17 years of age, regardless of law. The laws force them to do it in the shadows, without adult supervision. That's why our rates of alcoholism are significantly higher than those in European countries where teens are legally able to drink at 16 or 17.

Take away the mystery and the taboo, and you take away the lure.
 
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Adulthood has been delayed by our refusal to treat young adults like adults. Nothing more or less.

But what of the more concrete issues? Like finishing school and being able to support oneself? You can treat a person "like an adult" all you want, but if they are still living at home and financially dependent on their folks...

EDIT: You added more while I wrote a reply, so here's my reponse to the rest of your post.

Yes, external and artificial limits won't necessary help anything. But neither will giving a person a drink at age 12, 15, or 18 necessarily do anything either. It depends on the person.
 
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But what of the more concrete issues? Like finishing school and being able to support oneself? You can treat a person "like an adult" all you want, but if they are still living at home and financially dependent on their folks...

It's a process. If you want people to gracefully assume the responsibilities of adulthood, then you gradually transition them into doing so, rather than postponing it as long as possible. It's a matter of how you see your role. I see my role to be the creation of a fully functioning, mostly independent human being by the time she goes off to college. That's my job. So, I'm allowing her to experience some freedoms now so she will be used to them and able to handle them by the time she goes. Now is her time to make mistakes, and learn from them.
 
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It's a process. If you want people to gracefully assume the responsibilities of adulthood, then you gradually transition them into doing so, rather than postponing it as long as possible. It's a matter of how you see your role. I see my role to be the creation of a fully functioning, mostly independent human being by the time she goes off to college. That's my job. So, I'm allowing her to experience some freedoms now so she will be used to them and able to handle them by the time she goes. Now is her time to make mistakes, and learn from them.

Hey I'd be the first person to argue that it should be up to the parents. I'd be totally in favor of a law that took off age restrictions with parental consent... assuming, of course, that the parents took responsibility for any adverse affects.
 
My view is that some drinks like beer and maybe wine should be at 18 and hard licoror should be at 21.

that's a good idea, but the ages should be changed to 16 for beer and 18 for alcohol.
 
It was not long ago when my 19 year old mother drank legally in college. It was also not long ago that I started drinking in high school. I have come to the conclusion that the drinking age at 21, 18 or 19 is mostly irrelevant, except in terms of supposed brain development. A certain part of me believes there is some (while working at a liquor store, I knew it was easily to come to the conclusion that legal drinkers are hardly mature at all) maturity level difference from 17/18->20/21, but I also realize that much of that could be reliant upon the responsibility of the law and its effects on the law abiding citizen.

I see no real reason to actively campaign for removal of the current restriction, or rather, actively campaign to maintain it.
 
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The drinking age was 18 in Kansas and 21 in Missouri when I started my freshman year of college, and my college was close enough to Kansas that if we wanted to get cheap legal beer, we did so with impunity. I don't see that the law impacted my drinking in college at all, either way. That's why the idea of lowering it to 18 doesn't worry me too much. Frankly, if the law had been 18 in my home state, I'd probably have driven drunk a lot less.

Just saying...
 
Hey I'd be the first person to argue that it should be up to the parents. I'd be totally in favor of a law that took off age restrictions with parental consent... assuming, of course, that the parents took responsibility for any adverse affects.

I'm actually okay with my daughter having an occasional drink as long as she never drinks and drives, and never gets in a car with someone who is drinking. That's the major rule at our house. I grew up in a strict, tee-totaling, southern baptist home, and my parents never drank. i was a complete drunk in college, and often drove when I was too drunk to walk. That obviously didn't work on me. I'm taking a different approach with my daughter and hoping it works better.
 
The feds should get out of the issue and stop punishing states for making up their own minds.

This is a good idea - we need more states rights.
Then compare notes and see what works and what does not...
 
It was not long ago when my 19 year old mother drank legally in college. It was also not long ago that I started drinking in high school. I have come to the conclusion that the drinking age at 21, 18 or 19 is mostly irrelevant, except in terms of supposed brain development. A certain part of me believes there is some (while working at a liquor store, I knew it was easily to come to the conclusion that legal drinkers are hardly mature at all) maturity level difference from 17/18->20/21, but I also realize that much of that could be reliant upon the responsibility of the law and its effects on the law abiding citizen.

I see no real reason to actively campaign for removal of the current restriction, or rather, actively campaign to maintain it.

I like your point about maturity.

Here, you can buy beer at 16, and we don't have so many problems about young teenagers being alcoholics. Of course, sometimes some of them try the "binge drinking" (?), but some young people also breath deodorants or even gas from lighters. You can't prevent immature people from doing immature things.

Furthermore, bans like that make drinking alcohol more exciting: when you're prevented from doing something and suddenly you're allowed to do it, you're "forced" to try, especially when you're 18 or 21 years old.

The main problem is not that young people can or cannot drink alcohol at a certain age, it's rather that some people become drunkards. And bans don't prevent this. Only education can do it. It's much better to be allowed to drink young and get used to it, to learn the effects of alcohol (hangovers...) and to learn to control your consumption.
 
I am happy about the liberal Danish views on alcohol when I grew up in the 80's and 90's. From a very early age I was allowed to taste small sips of alcohol and when I turned about 15 alcohol became commonplace at parties. However there were always responsible adults (typically parents) present to prevent things from getting out of hand. Of course someone got sick at some point but the most that happened was that they puked, had a bad hangover the next day and learned where their limits were. It is unpleasant while it is going on but a good thing afterwards. I had a lot of good experiences with alcohol and have not turned into an alcoholic drunk-driver.

Instead of alcohol being something mystic it becomes a common part of life and you learn to deal with it responsibly. Thus I don't think teenagers should be kept completely dry - instead they should be allowed to make their mistakes in a safe environment.
 
I think the real question is:

If we have as a society "deemed" 18 to be the age in which we consider a person to be an adult, what right does the government have in telling an adult whether they can drink alcohol?

I understand that younger people make more stupid decisions, yada yada yada....but I don't think the government should be making decisions for people who have been deemed "Adults".
 
I voted for no age limit, with parental consent of course.

My parents allowed me to drink wine with dinner by the time I was about 12, I think, and I didn't like it. My dad offered me a taste of his beer whenever he would have it, and I didn't like that either. By the time I was 21 I wasn't interested in liquor of any kind. Only recently have I discovered that Mike's Hard Lemonade is pretty good, and that Tequila, while it tastes like ass, can make it so that you can't feel your face, and that not being able to feel your face is kind of funny when in the company of friends.
 
I voted "no age," which is actually more consistent with existing laws than some would expect. The so-called "minimum legal drinking age" is actually a minimum purchase age, with actual consumption of alcohol by people under 21 prohibited in only a few states. There are additional laws against possession that are quite prevalent, however, and cause many to be hit with the charge of "internal possession" after drinking.

Teen drunk driving has declined by around 60 or 70% since the drinking age has been increased to 21 on the federal level. Thats reason enough to have a drinking age of 21.

I've long been dubious of the veracity of that claim, since alcohol-related fatalities among drivers under 21 have fallen by a similar proportion in Canada, despite the fact that the drinking age remains 18 or 19 depending on the region.

I and others have theorized that the drop in fatal crashes that occurred both in the U.S. and Canada might be better attributed to the numerous vehicular safety improvements have been made in cars since the 1980's, and the fact that auto accidents in general have decreased. Hence, it is not so implausible to suggest that alcohol-related auto accidents would decrease as part of this trend (and yes, I saw what you said in regard to that, but I'll need to see more data). In fact, I'd say it's more implausible to suggest the opposite, considering that, again, alcohol-related fatalities among drivers under 21 have fallen by a similar proportion in Canada, despite the fact that the drinking age remains 18 or 19 depending on the region. Incidentally, this is also NHTSA data.

U.S. Department of Transportation - NHTSA - Determine Why There Are Fewer Young Alcohol-Impaired Drivers - IV. What Caused the Decrease? - DOT HS 809 348

NHTSA said:
Fatal crash data. Data from 1982 to date from the seven provinces for which these data are available (Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba, New Brunswick, Ontario, Prince Edward Island, and Saskatchewan) were provided by the Transport Injury Research Foundation (TIRF). The data differ slightly from the United States FARS data in three ways. First, they record driver fatalities rather than driver involvements in fatal crashes. Second, they aggregate drivers age 16-19 rather than drivers under 21 as has been used for the United States. Finally, the TIRF file does not estimate alcohol presence for a driver without a BAC test. The proportion of fatally injured drivers with a positive BAC is calculated only for the drivers with a BAC test. Most drivers are tested: 76 percent of the age 16-19 driver fatalities in 1982 and 93 percent in 1997.

These differences may affect comparisons between the Canadian and United States data somewhat. For example, if BAC tests are available less frequently for sober drivers than for drinking drivers, then the proportion of fatally-injured drivers with a positive BAC calculated only from the tested drivers may overstate the proportion for all fatally-injured drivers. But these differences should not affect the trends over time or trend comparisons between the two countries.

Figure 31 shows the trend in Canadian fatally-injured drinking drivers aged 16-19. It looks rather similar to the United States trend of Figure 1, with a rapid decrease through about 1993 and no substantial change since then. (The Canadian trend fluctuates more from year to year than the United States trend since the absolute number of Canadian traffic fatalities is much smaller.) Figure 32 shows how very similar the two trends are by plotting both using a base of 1982 = 100 percent.

Figure 31.
Canadian Driver Fatalities, Age 16-19, with Positive BAC
figure31.gif


Figure 32.
US and Canadian Trends, Percentage Change from 1982
US: drivers under age 21 in fatal crashes with positive BAC (FARS)
Canada: driver fatalities age 16-19 with positive BAC (TIRF)
figure32.gif


Figure 33 shows the trend in the proportion of fatally-injured Canadian drivers with a positive BAC. The trend is similar to the corresponding United States trend of Figure 3. The absolute percentages are higher in Canada: 67 percent in 1982 (compared to 43 percent in the United States) and 39 percent in 1997 (compared to 21 percent). Some of this difference may be a result of the different methods used to estimate alcohol involvement in the two data files. Some may in fact reflect higher drinking and driving rates in Canada. But the trends in the two countries again appear very similar. Figure 34 compares the trends directly.

Figure 33.
Percent of Canadian Driver Fatalities, Age 16-19, with Positive BAC
figure33.gif


Figure 34.
US and Canadian Trends, Percentage Change from 1982
US: percentage of drivers under age 21 in fatal crashes with positive BAC (FARS)
Canada: percentage of driver fatalities age 16-19 with positive BAC (TIRF)
figure34.gif


Figures 32 and 34 show the same thing: as measured by fatal crash data, youth drinking and driving decreases in the United States and Canada from 1982 to 1997 were virtually identical. Other data strengthen this conclusion. In both countries, the number of young drinking drivers in fatal crashes decreased more rapidly than the number of older drinking drivers. A roadside survey in British Columbia produced results similar to Roeper and Voas (1999): a much smaller proportion of drivers age 16-19 than older drivers had a positive BAC, or a BAC exceeding the legal limit of 0.08 (Mayhew and Simpson, 1999).

Survey data. Smart, Adlaf, and Walsh (1994) report on biennial surveys of about 4,000 Ontario high school students similar to the Monitoring the Future surveys in the United States. Table 17 summarizes self-reported drinking changes from 1979 to 1991 from the two surveys.
Since the Ontario data come from a sample of students in grades 7-13, while the United States data come from high school seniors, it's no surprise that overall self-reported drinking levels are lower in Ontario. The reductions, though, are generally similar: a modest reduction in annual drinking, substantial reductions in binge drinking, and reductions close to 50 percent in both daily drinking (at low levels in both countries) and driving after drinking.

The NHTSA attributes this to alcohol education programs in Canada, (which would still question the necessity of a high drinking age), but has essentially no evidence to validate this claim. It could very well be true, of course, but I'm inclined to believe that vehicular safety improvements in industrialized countries resulted in these overall decreases.
 
thank you agers, good info for my new position.

Ps your barred:)
 
I've long been dubious of the veracity of that claim, since alcohol-related fatalities among drivers under 21 have fallen by a similar proportion in Canada, despite the fact that the drinking age remains 18 or 19 depending on the region.

Yeah, you are right. I posted this a while back, but the source of the 70% reduction in drinking fatalities for people 21 and under admited that the increased drinking age can only be attributed to around 16% of the reduction in deaths.

So even though most of the reductions have been other factors, the increased drinking age still has made some impact.
 
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