Jeffbx

University leaders want to lower the drinking age


What do you think? Colleges just fed up trying to enforce underage drinking laws, or legitimate debate?

I'm kinda torn - on one hand, there's a definite drop in underage drunk driving fatalities since 1984, when the federal government told states to move the drinking age to 21 or lose federal funding. But that could also be related to MADD, drunk driving education, and safer roads & vehicles.

On the other hand, the majority of other countries set their limit at 18 (or below), and they seem OK with it. I remember that as a kid I drank way more before I turned 21 than I ever did after, and I'm sure that was at least partly because I wasn't supposed to.

I can't really see this debate getting very far, but I find it very interesting that it's been thrown on the table by university leaders.

cruelpupet

Horrible idea.

If you lower it to 18 you are combining inexperienced drinkers with inexperienced drivers. At least at 21 you have a few years behind the wheel to help you out.

What they should do is lower the age to 16. Then hopefully you will have a better idea of your drinking limits before you are able to drive.

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TruckStuff

Teenagers are going to be stupid at any age, regardless of what the law says. By keeping it at 21, you are at least making *some* effort to keep it out of their hands until they *might* be able to handle it.

And re: other countries. I'm starting to think that the US just can't handle it. Those same countries also claim to have fewer drug addicts to go along with loser drug laws, but I just can't bring myself to believe that people in this country would be able to manage themselves well in that situation.

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Prngr44

I've also heard camps arguing to raise the driving age to 18. I think if you do one (lower the drinking age,) the other should go hand in hand.

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VTGreg

I think lowering the drinking age to 18 will have limited impact on binge drinking in college. There are plenty of people that continue to binge drink in college after turning 21. I think it is more the college atmosphere than the drinking age that contributes to binge drinking.

How many people actually had a difficult time getting alcohol once they got to college?

This may also have a negative impact on binge drinking among high school students. If the drinking age were lowered to 18, high schoolers would have much more access to alcohol and thus an easier time participating in binge drinking.

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baggio248

The president of the school my wife works at voted for this. The backlash has begun around here. It's a horrible idea.

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WhiskeyPapa

The drinking age was 19 when I was in college. The easy accessibility to alcohol made binge drinking worse, not better.

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renovation

it was 18 when i became of age to drink.
and i know when it went back to 21 in michigan. we lost a lot less young people on the roads from drunk driving. sure at 14 or so i remember trying my first real drinking. went to a friend house and we all got into the cooking sherry cherry flavor at that was it crappy .also about the first time i had a beer.we stole it from someplace . can't remember but we hid it in my grarage for a day or to .till we were sure it was safe to open and drink it. bottle of piss warm and maybe even skunked E&B beer. i think thats why to this day im not much of a beer drinker. i do remember that it did get warm those days it was hid in the garage maybe around 90 out. in a closed up garage crap beer to begin with and then warm and skunked nothing better could there be for your first taste of beer with a good friend

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Thesifer

So then we can have people that just got their license drinking and driving? greeeat.

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ShawnLee

I am torn on this. I really do understand the arguments for lowering to 18.
- If you can fight for your country, you should be responsible enough to be trusted to drink (the argument that got 18 year olds the vote, perhaps make it so anyone with military IDs can legally buy alcohol).
- If you can get married at 18, it makes no sense to not allow champagne at the wedding reception and honeymoon.
- Other countries seem to do it fine.
- Kids are drinking under 21 already.

Still, and maybe it's an emotional argument for me, I don't like the idea of lowering the drinking age.

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The Happy Squirrel

ill just keep it short and simple BAD IDEA!!!!!!

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DarkFury

I concur... it's a very bad idea.

Not to mention alot of high schoolers are doing it already illegally... The current laws have no teeth in them.

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nate el bueno

Regardless of the fact that I'm not 21 yet I am in the middle ground. I think one thing that turns the younger crowd onto this so much is the fact that it's illegal. I think half of it is the thrill and the bragging rights for them.

And reno, i'm totally with you, except not with beer. I used to always sneak down at night and palm the ice cream sandwiches from the freezer. One night I took them out and forgot to eat them right away. When I got to them an hour later or so, they tasted like curdled milk!! I never ate another ice cream sandwich!

Jeffbx

"Ice cream sandwich"

Use whatever euphemism you want, beer is beer!


(JK)

nate el bueno

hahaha!
I stopped by a camp geared towards the younger ones to visit some people there the other day. Some of the kids had run into the same problem as my "ice cream sandwiches" and when I got there, kept wondering why they kept talking about trees. I was finally caught on when they kept saying, "I LOVE TREES!!"

LPMiller

The problem is in how we treat drinking in this country, not what the age is we allow it at.

We treat it as a binary thing. We tell people to 'drink responsibly' but all that means is "don't drive". We don't explain anything to kids about drinking. Frankly, most of them think the whole point is to drink till you pass out. We skip the middle ground, and imply that drinking is just one glass of beer. We drunk to feel something, and we should be pointing out that drinking to feel something and drinking till you are puking your guts out are 2 entirely different things. If we JUST lower the age, without changing the expectations, we aren't really doing any good. It's no wonder that when kids drink, they binge. They don't learn any other way other than the hard way.

The reason it's not that big a problem in other countries is really in how it's treated. Getting buzzed is acceptable over there, getting cream faced isn't. Over here, it's getting cream faced or not drinking at all. I really don't understand it.

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cruelpupet

good observation lpm...id agree

Yossarian

LPM beat me to it. unless we change the perception of all or nothing with alcohol, we could have the drinking age at 25 or 15, and we'd have the same problems.

being of college age (22) and still having many friends in college or just having turned 21, most of the stories that arise are all competitions on who could drink more in a shorter amount of time. not many my age realize that you can have 1 beer with dinner and not need 15 after. or that its ok to come home and have a drink after a long/tiring/stressful day and that you don't need to kill a bottle.

of course, theses are the words of a hypocritical alcoholic

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Napoleon54

I don't understand why 18yos can vote, get married, be drafted to fight and die in a war, and are considered to have reached the age of maturity for every other purpose... but they can't have a single drink. We need to get the sticks out of our asses, this country is way too uptight. Drunk driving and binge drinking are irresponsible at any age. Some people can handle responsible drinking at 14, some can't at 40. The 21yo drinking age is just silly. We need to stop trying to control and micromanage everything. Educate our kids, then trust them to make intelligent and informed decisions.

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Thesifer

While I won't fight FOR the lowering, cause it's not that big of a deal to me. As I'm of age, and kids that are going to drink do it anyways.. Some responsibly, some not. I do agree that treating people like kids makes them act like kids.

We had plenty of that in the Navy. People would get in trouble for dumb things all of the time because we were treated like 17 year olds. And not just while in Boot camp or School. While on the ship, you would have curfew's and other restrictions that make you feel like your parents are telling you to be back.

So the younger guys and some of the older ones (since a lot of people don't mature properly because of it) decided a "curfew" meant.. "Better drink AS MUCH as you can before the curfew and try not to puke too much on the way back to the ship."

It was silly, irresponsible on the upper Navy brass, and a problem for American public image abroad, which isn't so great right now anyways, but was better for a good part of the time I spent overseas.

Jeffbx

Digging up a thread from last year - looks like the debate continues:


Read the full story at the link. He has some really valid points.

zippyjuan

"They are going to do it so why make it illegal?" Surrender. There was a "split" drinking age when I was in college- you could buy up to 3.2% alcohol beverages when you were 18 but had to wait until 21 to buy anything stronger. The fact of binge drinking increasing under the 21 age limit it does not necessarily follow that alcohol consumption will go down if it is changed. Especially at colleges.

I don't agree with the "other countries have lower drinking ages" either. Those countries also have high rates of alcoholism. It does not necessarily teach responsible drinking.

It may be because I am older but it seems to me that kids today drink much greater quantities of alcohol than when I was in school.

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Houdini

Tricky issue, for sure. I see problems in my psych ER daily due to underage drinking, but in LA until 1996 (around the time I moved here,) the drinking age was 18 (LA being the last state to fold to the fed's demand regarding road funding.)

However, in LA, the law is a little strange. You can't buy alcohol until you're 21. However, you CAN drink at age 18 if you're in a private residence (or yard,) or are in public with your parents. Worked out great in college, as occasionally the Jesuits would call a quad by the dorms the "back yard" and beer was served for free on some afternoons for a year or so. Then they stopped that, but it was still ok to drink in the dorm at age 18-20 as long as a 21 year-old carried the alcohol into the dorm.

I still think that if you're old enough to be drafted to defend the country, vote, drive, give consent to thousands of things, etc., you should be old enough to do anything that's legal for the rest of us now-older folks.

H