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Drinking at 18 again?
Topic Started: Aug 15 2007, 05:42 AM (195 Views)
TheObserver

Quote:
 
Over the strong objection of federal safety officials, a quiet movement to lower the legal drinking age to 18 is taking root as advocates argue that teenagers who are allowed to vote and fight for their country should also be able to enjoy a beer or two.

The proposal, which is the subject of a national petition drive by the National Youth Rights Association, has been studied in a handful of states in recent years, including Florida, Wisconsin, Vermont and Missouri, where supporters are pushing a ballot initiative.

Opponents of the idea point to a reported rise in binge drinking as teenagers increasingly turn to hard liquor as proof that minors should not be allowed to drink, but proponents look at the same data and draw the opposite conclusion.

“Raising the drinking age to 21 was passed with the very best of intentions, but it’s had the very worst of outcomes,” said David J. Hanson, an alcohol policy expert at the State University of New York-Potsdam. “Just like during national Prohibition, the law has pushed and forced underage drinking and youthful drinking underground, where we have no control over it.”

But Mark Rosenker, chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board, countered: “Why would we repeal or weaken laws that save lives? It doesn’t make sense.” 

Different laws in different states
As it happens, there is no such thing as a “federal legal drinking age.” Many states do not expressly prohibit minors from drinking alcohol, although most of those do set certain conditions, such as its use in a religious ceremony or in the presence of a parent or other guardian.

The phrase refers instead to a patchwork of state laws adopted in the mid-1980s under pressure from Congress, which threatened in 1984 to withhold 10 percent of federal highway funds from states that did not prohibit selling alcohol to those under the age of 21. By 1988, 49 states had complied; after years of court fights, Louisiana joined the crowd in 1995.

All states ban selling alcohol to minors, and nearly all prohibit possession, but many do not expressly bar minors from consuming it.

Libertarian groups and some conservative economic foundations, seeing the age limits as having been extorted by Washington, have long championed lowering the drinking age. But in recent years, many academics and non-partisan policy groups have joined their cause for a different reason: The age restriction does not work, they say. Drinking has gone on behind closed doors and underground, where responsible adults cannot keep an eye on it.

“It does not reduce drinking. It has simply put young adults at greater risk,” said John M. McCardell, former president of Middlebury College in Vermont, who this year set up a non-profit organization called Choose Responsibility to push for a lower drinking age.

McCardell offers what he calls a simple challenge:

“The law was changed in 1984, and the law had a very specific purpose, and that was to prohibit drinking among those under the age of 21,” he said. “The only way to measure the success of that law is to ask ourselves whether, 23 years later, those under 21 are not drinking.”

So are they?

The federal government’s National Survey on Drug Use and Health found that in 2005, the most recent year for which complete figures are available, 85 percent of 20-year-old Americans reported that they had used alcohol. Two out of five said they had binged — that is, consumed five or more drinks at one time — within the previous month.

“The evidence is very clear,” McCardell said. “It has had no effect.”

James C. Fell, a former federal highway safety administrator who is a senior researcher on alcohol policy with the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation, acknowledged that “it’s not a perfect law. It doesn’t totally prevent underage drinking.”

But Fell said the age restriction “does save lives. We have the evidence.”

Lower deaths rates disputed
The evidence, widely touted by Rosenker of the NTSB, Mothers Against Drunk Driving and other activist groups, rests in a study by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, or NHTSA, which estimated that from 1975 to 2003, higher drinking ages saved 22,798 lives on America’s roadways.

“Twenty-five thousand lives is a lot of people to set aside when you’re looking at a current problem,” said Brian Demers, a 20-year-old student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who is a member of MADD’s board of directors.

That figure is disputed by proponents of lowering the drinking age. They have questioned the NHTSA study, which did not explain how it arrived at its estimate. Moreover, it counted any accident as “alcohol-related” if any participant was legally drunk — including victims who may not have been responsible for the accident.

“The methodology used has been widely criticized by scholars,” said Hanson, of SUNY-Potsdam, who called the report “really more of a guesstimate” that showed only a correlation of numbers, not a causal relationship. In fact, he said, alcohol-related traffic fatalities among minor drivers were already declining before 1984, when the drinking-age measure was passed.

Barrett Seaman, author of “Binge: What Your College Student Won’t Tell You,” echoed Hanson’s assessment, saying, “Those statistics are a little suspicious.”

Even so, Rosenker said Tuesday, alcohol is still the leading cause of death among teenagers in highway crashes.

“The data show that when teens drink and drive they are highly unlikely to use seat belts,” he said. “These are the facts, and it would be a serious mistake and a national tragedy to weaken existing drinking age laws.”

Adults ‘written out of the equation’
To McCardell, however, the real problem is that we are not teaching teenagers how to drink responsibly.

Choose Responsibility proposes lowering the drinking age to 18, but only in conjunction with “drinking licenses,” similar to driver’s licenses, mandating alcohol education for those ages 18 to 21.

“Education works,” McCardell said, but “it’s never been tried. Now it’s mandatory only after you’ve been convicted of DUI. That is not an act of genius.”
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Kraul

I don't know where I stand on this.

Part of me agrees with the mentality that if they can vote and fight for their country then they should also be able to drink. But at the same time, I feel that it would encourage even more young drinkers to drink - which is kind of scary.

Then again, the misanthrope/heel CM Punk in me says that perhaps it would be better to do away with the legal age concept altogether. If someone wants to drink and potentially ruin their lives, go for it.
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PeckU2
Franchise Player
NO NO NO NO NO NO

Thats fucking gay! I've waited for like 4 years to turn 21...if they change it, it better be like 5 years from now
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MY85
It's a fabulous new day, yes it is!
PeckU2
Aug 15 2007, 12:59 AM
NO NO NO NO NO NO

Thats fucking gay! I've waited for like 4 years to turn 21...if they change it, it better be like 5 years from now

Sorry Peck, but that sounded pretty funny...

Actually, I always found the idea of being able to drink at the age of 21 pretty stupid. But I do see Kraul's point, though.
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Legacy
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snooooooooop
I don't drink so I don't care. :cool:
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Cybrus
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STAY HYPED!!!
I'm in favor of lowering the drinking age. I think it would easily solve more problems than it would create. Unless I'm mistaken, all other countries have younger drinking restrictions than the US and all of those countries have less alcohol related accidents/crimes. I'm not suggesting lowering the drinking age will solve all problems, that's just foolish. But I do think that it'll help a lot more than it would hurt.
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Nubochanozep
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Hasn't seem to have done a whole lot of harm elsewhere...
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MY85
It's a fabulous new day, yes it is!
Legal Drinking Age Worldwide

I don't think it will affect the USA that much by lowering their age for being able to drink alcohol.
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WWEFootos48
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God
I say that no teen should be able to drink before leaving High School. They're going to anyway, but if they're allowed to drink, how do you think it makes fellow classmates and teachers feel if someone comes in with a hangover or something? It's bad enough already, but if they're actually allowed to drink, most will go hog wild with it. At least when they do it illegally, they don't have the weight to shove it in people's faces without getting in trouble.
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Cybrus
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STAY HYPED!!!
A student could get into trouble for coming to school in such a state. If I were to go to work with a hangover or whatever, then my boss is not just going to excuse it and give me leeway that night. She's going to ride my ass for coming into work like that and then probably write me up if I am unable to do my job because of my condition. The same could be applied to school matters. If the student comes to class in an altered stated, then he/she should be held accountable.

Of course, I once again state that lowering the drinking age would most likely solve more problems than it would cause. One of the biggest reasons why younger people drink is because they are not suppose to (there's other reasons, I know). If you tell them it is ok, then you take away that particular appeal. If they can get the alcohol themselves, then they are less likely to go somewhere just because "there's beer".
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_DL_
Member Avatar
BURN IT DOOOWWNNNNNNNN!
I really don't care about this, since I have no desire to drink at all. And it's been said that kids are going to drink anyway and that if they're old enough to go to war, why not be old enough to drink.
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Madness420
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The drinking age should absolutely be 18. Most people start drinking when they are 15-16 anyways so the law really means nothing. Kids already come into class with hangovers and come to class drunk so I doubt it would be much different. Hell I drank much more when I was ages 16-18 than I do now!
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Lionheart
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Heat Lifer
If you're old enough to smoke, vote, drive, and go to war at age 18, I see no problem with being able to drink at 18.
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JD Storm
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McDonald's Heavyweight Champion
agreed, Lionheart! at 18, people can legally vote. at 18, you can legally smoke. you can join the military, go to war & die at 18. many states allow you to drive at 16!


many teenagers get adult punishments, if convicted of certain crimes.


if all of this can happen to peopl at 18 or younger, why stop them from drinking? you're either an adult under the eyes of the law or you're not. if not......then take away their right to smoke, vote, drive, hold a job, military service and everything else that makes them adults.
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jackymatic
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He died for your sins
Holy Crap!

I looked at romania's worldwide Drinking Age and it had no MINIMUM! I lol'd

and the purchase age is 18.... Sale of all distilled spirits is illegal for those under 18. Advertising distilled alcohol is forbidden during the day (between 5:00 and 22:00). All restrictions apply on sale and distribution to underage persons, not consumption.

lol anyways

I think 21 is a reasonable age....I mean, it would be really scary to see seniors in high school drinking hard liquor...but hey, I knew people that drank freshman year...
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Big Time
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I'm what Willis was talkin' 'bout.
Lionheart took the words right out of my mouth. In Wisconsin, you can actually be locked up in a federal penatentery(?) for certain crimes at 17 years of age cause you're considered an adult, and yet, you really have none of the other adult privelages.

I agree 100% with what you said, Lionheart, but don't forget Porn. Once 18, you can also be scandalized by porn, but you still can't take a drink.
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STARS
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In my country I can drink as much as I want when Im 18. But thing is i dont drink right now so it does not matter. Alcohol can be sucha bitch sometimes. Has more negative effects than postive so know dont lower drinking age in US.
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