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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Should the Drinking Age Be Lowered from 21?
Let's keep it as is
As far as I’m concerned, I really don’t understand why people feel the need to drink at all, but then I do realize that I’m very much in the minority.
Regardless of whatever number is given to legal drinking age, there will always be those just a few years younger who will try to ‘pass for legal age’. Yes – right now there may very well be 20, 19 and 18 year olds who pose as older. However, if the legal drinking age were lowered to 18, then 17, 16 and even 15 year olds will try to ‘squeak’ through. This could be a really big problem. Teenagers today dress and appear much older than those of yesteryear although they do not yet have the maturity and wisdom which comes from experience. I say – let’s leave it at 21.
The only real benefit that I foresee in lowering the drinking age to 18 is a financial benefit to the alcohol industry.
- redondo July 12, 2008 4:08PM
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No Education = Bad Decisions
Who is a 21 year old supposed to learn appropriate alcohol consumption from? He's long since left home and it can't be in college as all the college presidents are saying. You have a generation of young people learning about alcohol from other 21 year olds at keggers and bars. It should be no surprise that college students are dying from alcohol consumption. Lowering the drinking age to 18 allows people to learn about alcohol from adults. Not by trial and error and from peers.
Your comment about the alcohol industry is dismissive. There is no benefit of this to the alcohol industry if adults of this country are allowed to teach the younger generation how to drink responsibly.
- ltp
August 25, 2008 11:52AM
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Side: Yes
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Maybe not...
When i first read your comment, i was sure that it was a bad idea. My gut instinct told me that lowering the drinking age would only allow more alcohol in the hands of children.
Then i applied your theory to my own life. When i did this, the results were favorable and seemed to make sense. Perhaps i was mistaken.
I then realized that i had intelligent and responsible parents. Imagine the repercussions if the parents were not seriously involved in their child's transition to drinking. A uninformed and unsupervised transition at that age could have extremely harmful side effects.
Because of the possibility that the parents will not necessarily be a positive role model for their child, the drinking age should be set at an age where the person drinking alcohol is able to make rational and intelligent decisions on their own.
Perhaps the drinking age should not be lowered.
- Jefe32
September 13, 2008 6:14PM
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Education and experience, not prohibition
When I was 18, I spent several months in Sweden, where the drinking age is 18. As a teenager, I drank alcohol at home, but many of my friends had to sneak off to parties and drink all they could when they had the chance. When I went out in the world and had the opportunity to legally drink, it just wasn't that interesting.
The ferry between Copenhagen and Sweden was the only place where I ever saw drunk, disruptive people in Scandinavia. There is no drinking age in Denmark, so there were often drunk Swedish teenagers on their way back from a drinking spree.
We need to take away from the fascination with alcohol. If parents have a drink with their kids and teach them important factors, such as knowing when to stop, it would be far less dangerous than forcing kids -- and legal adults -- to sneak around. Also, it might steer teens away from harder drugs, as it is often easier for a teen to obtain marijuana or crack than it is to get some booze.
- CandieKelty August 27, 2008 1:32PM
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Side: Yes
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Why shouldn't the drinking age be lowered?
There are so many different angles and opinions on a topic like this, it is obvious that this will be discussed for years to come.
I'd first like to point out that the United States of America is one of few countries, in the entire world, that has a legal age of 21 - 95% of other countries are 18 or younger - and our drinking age law is matched by ultra- conservative laws of Pakistan, Indonesia, parts of India and Armenia.
But, rather than arguing what other countries are doing, there are two fundamental questions that I would like answered: 1) at what age does society consider us as adults, and 2) to what extend do we allow our government to dictate what we do to our own bodies.
1) While this is a common argument made by those for lowering the drinking age, it is still a valid argument. Why is it that you are legally an adult when it comes to custody, jury duty, civic duty, you can purchase cigarettes (which kill more people a year than alcoholic related deaths), join the military, vote for our President - but you cannot purchase alcohol. When the drinking age was raised in 1984, was it solely traffic related deaths that pushed the law through and has it had a reverse affect?
2) I am completely for punishing those that break the law and maximizing punishment when breaking the law causing pain/suffering/death to others. However, I do not believe our founding fathers created the consitution with the current world in mind. Our government has granted liberties and taken away others based on what seems to be driven by lobbyists, money and power . I question if the drinking age has more to do with control and pleasing a select conservative/religous group, rather than the best interests of our youth or our rights as law abiding individuals.
I am sure it is obvious what side I am taking, but I will certainly take the "European Myth" article and post it onto my blog because both sides of the arguement should be heard.
My blog and website deal with drinking, drinking games , and college humor. It was not created as a means of glorifying excessive drinking or teaching kids how to do get loaded (but I'm sure some of you will disagree). Healthy debate has created this nation and I look forward to your comments on this site or mine.
- drinknird
April 19, 2009 1:12AM
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Side: Yes
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