Do you remember your first taste of alcohol? How old were you? Twenty-one? All 50 states currently demand that their citizens reach age 21 before they can legally drink. But there's a growing movement that says mandatory minimum laws may do more harm than good. When determining the right date when a young person can take one of their final steps towards personal responsibility and freedom, what's the right answer?
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The European Myth
- From PIRE
By Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation - Bringing Research to Life
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My own experience
Being a high school senior in the United States and a native German gave me some inside into alcohol consumption on both sides of the atlantic.
While, as it was said, in the U.S. all drinking happens behind closed doors, the respondents to a poll (as "The European Myth" brings forward) ar far less likely to respond truthfully. They are breaking the law and who is likely to commit to breaking the law?
In my experience the amount of drinking did barely differ between the U.S. and German teens. (Interesting, as it is a lot harder to obtain alcohol in the States) U.S. teens more frequently drank hard liquor as obtaining an (alcohol-)equivalent amount of beer and keeping it concealed is a lot harder to accomplish.
One problem that is paramount in my perspective is the younger driving age. Teenagers are allowed to drive a car in the U.S. and need to do so, as public transportation is nearly unavailable. Thus drinking teenagers will drive without the ability to judge their impairment.
- zebrab July 30, 2008 2:52AM
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Thanks for "The European Myth." This is information that some of us have been trying to get out for some time. It's important to combat this myth, because it remains entirely prevalent. At the very least, we can clearly argue that most European countries have youth drinking problems as bad as in the US and, in many cases, worse.
- Dale
August 26, 2008 9:32AM
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Let's bust this myth!
I serve a very diverse community as a prevention specialist and am amazed at the life of this myth--even in the face of evidence proving it false!
It is interesting to hear from someone who has experienced this issue from different cultural perspectives. My own colleagues tell me that they were given small amounts of alcohol as children, but many note that it was this practice that gave rise to alcohol use disorders affecting them and other family members.
There is much evidence from Great Britain, Australia, and other countries around the world that early onset of alcohol use is not a safe practice that gives rise to reduced public health problems with alcohol.
Thanks for the post (I am familiar with the source document, which readers can access at http://www.udetc.org/documents/CompareDrinkRate.pdf
if they find the graphs hard to read here.)
- Concerned Skeptic September 4, 2008 12:29PM
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example of how you manipulate numbers.
{Young people in nearly all European countries report drinking in the past 30 days in a greater percentage than in the United States}
Yes 16 year old Europeans drink more than Americans . This is because its legal and they don’t have to lie about it. But if you who’d look at European teen and drunk driving the number will by lower than America. Not because they are more responsible, but because they may not drive a car yet.
{A greater percentage of young people in a majority of European countries report having five or more drinks in a session}
Ok drinking 5 drinks in one session. What is one session? Going to a bar on a Friday night is very normal in Europe, on average 16 year olds stay there about 5 hours ,this is only 1 drink an hour. This isn’t binge drinking. By the time the go home the alcohol of the first 3 drinks will be broken down by the body.
{There is evidence that some European youth have higher rates of alcohol-related problems because of their heavy drinking}
You’re young so you experiment, things will go wrong. But the report does not come with numbers. And if you who’d compare 16 Europeans with 21 year old Americans and look at the number of people that end up in hospital I think there will be no big difference. (No prove sorry).
The big question is.
Is there a difference in drinking habits in later live between Europeans and Americans?
- jelle
September 17, 2009 8:41AM
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