Posted on 04/20/2011 9:04:12 AM PDT by bassmaner
Alaska state representative Bob Lynn (R., Anchorage) is asking the long overdue question: Why do we consider 18-year-olds old enough to join the military, to fight and die for our country, but not to have a drink with their friends before they ship out or while they’re home on leave? Lynn has introduced a bill that would allow anyone 18 years and older with a military ID to drink alcohol in Alaska.
The bill is already facing strong opposition from self-styled public-health advocates. However, the data indicate that the 21-minimum drinking age has not only done zero good, it may actually have done harm. In addition, an individual legally enjoys nearly all other rights of adulthood upon turning 18 — including the rights to vote, get married, and sign contracts. It is time to reduce the drinking age for all Americans.
In the early 1970s, with the passage of the 26th amendment (which lowered the voting age to 18), 29 states lowered their minimum legal drinking age to 18, 19, or 20 years old. Other states already allowed those as young as 18 to buy alcohol, such as Louisiana, New York, and Colorado. However, after some reports showed an increase in teenage traffic fatalities, some advocacy groups pushed for a higher drinking age. They eventually gained passage of the 1984 National Minimum Drinking Age Act, which lets Congress withhold 10 percent of a state’s federal highway funds if it sets its minimum legal drinking age below 21. (Alaska would reportedly lose up to $50 million a year if Lynn’s bill passes.)
By 1988, all states had raised their drinking age to 21. In the years since, the idea of lowering the drinking age has periodically returned to the public debate, but groups such as Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) have been able to fight back attempts to change the law. (Louisiana briefly lowered its age limit in back to 18 in 1996, after the state Supreme Court ruled that the 21 limit was a form of age discrimination, but the court reversed that decision a few months later.)
It’s true that America has a problem with drinking: The rates of alcoholism and teenage problem drinking are far greater here than in Europe. Yet in most European countries, the drinking age is far lower than 21. Some, such as Italy, have no drinking age at all. The likely reason for the disparity is the way in which American teens are introduced to alcohol versus their European counterparts. While French or Italian children learn to think of alcohol as part of a meal, American teens learn to drink in the unmonitored environment of a basement or the backwoods with their friends. A 2009 studyby the National Institute on Drug Abuse, National Institute of Health, and U.S. Department of Health and Human Services concluded that 72 percent of graduating high-school seniors had already consumed alcohol.
The problem is even worse on college campuses, where there is an unspoken understanding between students, administrators, local law enforcement, and parents that renders drinking-age restrictions effectively moot as students drink alcohol at frat or house parties and in their dorm rooms. The result is dangerous, secret binge drinking. This unspoken agreement and the problems it creates led a group of college chancellors and presidents from around the nation to form the Amethyst Initiative, which proposes a reconsideration of the current drinking age.
Middlebury College president emeritus John M. McCardell, who is also a charter member of Presidents Against Drunk Driving, came out in favor of lowering the drinking age to 18 years old in a 2004 New York Times opinion article. “Our latter-day prohibitionists have driven drinking behind closed doors and underground,” he wrote. “Colleges should be given the chance to educate students, who in all other respects are adults, in the appropriate use of alcohol, within campus boundaries and out in the open.”
The most powerful argument, at least emotionally, for leaving the drinking age at 21 is that the higher age limit has prevented alcohol-related traffic fatalities. Such fatalities indeed decreased about 33 percent from 1988 to 1998 — but the trend is not restricted to the United States. In Germany, for example, where the drinking age is 16, alcohol-related fatalities decreased by 57 percent between 1975 and 1990. The most likely cause for the decrease in traffic fatalities is a combination of law enforcement, education, and advances in automobile-safety technologies such as airbags and roll cages.
In addition, statistics indicate that these fatalities may not even have been prevented but rather displaced by three years, and that fatalities might even have increased over the long run because of the reduced drinking age. In an award-winning study in 2010, University of Notre Dame undergraduate Dan Dirscherl found that banning the purchase of alcohol between the ages of 18 and 21 actually increased traffic fatalities of those between the ages of 18 and 24 by 3 percent. Dirscherl’s findings lend credence to the “experienced drinker” hypothesis, which holds that when people begin driving at 16 and gain confidence for five years before they are legally able to drink, they are more likely to overestimate their driving ability and have less understanding of how alcohol consumption affects their ability to drive.
Statistics aside, the drinking age in the U.S. is difficult to enforce and discriminatory toward adults between 18 and 21 years old. The current age limit has created a culture of hidden drinking and disrespect for the law. Regardless of whether an adult is in the military or a civilian, she ought to be treated as just that: an adult. If you are old and responsible enough to go to war, get married, vote, or sign a contract, then you are old and responsible enough to buy a bottle of beer and toast to living in a country that respects and protects individual rights. It is long past time the law caught up with that reality.
Good. Now I know it's EXACTLY the right thing to do - it's pissing off all the right kind of people.
I'm so sick of the nanny-state, I could vomit.
This "sliding scale" nonsense creates arbitrary classes of criminal based on nothing more than a Prohibitionist mindset looking for an excuse to nanny someone. Be it alcohol, firearms, or anything else.
To you, "freedom" is anarchy.
Just fyi you won’t find soldiers carrying AR-15’s in Afghanistan.
How many of us were 16 and drinking in bars when the legal age was 19???
How many of us were buying beer at 17 when the legal age was 21???
How many of us raided our parents liquor cabinets???
How many of us learned early that hangovers sucked??
How many of us after discovering tequila,’worshiped the porcelain god’ at 18???
No. Generally, the military's base drinking age reflects the drinking age limit of the surrounding community. There are some exceptions.
On our international bases, it gets a little more confusing, and the policy isn't uniform across service branches. Some bases you can drink as young as 18, and some other bases it's 20 or even 21. Again, it usually (but not necessarily) is dependent on what the host-country's drinking age is.
Ditto. Perfectly put.
I’m not afraid. But you appear to be prone to make assumptions. Have you always done that?
I can't speak for bassmaner, but such a proposal would get my support. A 12 year old is under the supervision of his parents and I would expect the parents to limit his activities accordingly. The state should stop encroaching into areas where it's not needed.
I could give you a host of good reasons if I had the time or space. Chief amongst them is that alcohol does nothing good at all for developing bodies or brains. It does however do a great deal of harm. At the very least, physical maturity is a good standard. Adult bodies deal with moderate amounts of alcohol fairly well. Non-adult bodies, not so much.
I do not drink. But I support lowering the drinking age to 18. Actually, I support lowering the drink purchase age and the public drinking age to 18, and allowing children at any age to drink in the presence of their legal guardians (not some other guardian, their own parents).
Increase the punishment for drinking and driving if that is the problem. Stop punishing harmless people who act responsibly because others are stupid and harmful. Punish the wicked, and stop taking away the rights of the lawful.
You can’t be serious. Cigarettes, pornography too? Because the parents are by their sides every single minute?
In the military the young people do what they are told to do. very little is left to the judgement of 18 to 21 year olds.
They are told what to wear, when to get up and go to bed, and when and what to eat. The military is actually super parent until real maturity and good judgement have been inculcated into them.
Serving in the military puts a young person on the final path to maturity, it isn’t the end of the journey.
Drinking requires jugement and self knowledge an 18 to 21 year simply has not yet developed.
Do you want to share the road with the drunk kid who just returned from bootcamp? I don’t.
My county has a curfew for kids, and I wish I could come up with a good reason for my kids to break it, just on principle. And if I want to let my 12-year-old have wine with dinner, so long as I keep it in moderation, that is no business of the state.
Same is true as toward pot, FWIW. People pretty much pick and choose which laws they will obey, now. Probably always have.
Put me in the camp that says either lower or abolish the drinking age.
Sarcasm...
Post #22 gets my vote for “best of thread”.
This is another manifestation of the “degrees of adulthood” that we have in this country.
When you’re 18, you can vote, enter into contracts, buy long guns, and join the military.
When you’re 21 you can buy alcohol and handguns.
When you’re 25 you can get a CCW (varies by state).
The parent thing is legal in most places. I could for example (if I were ignorant) have a few beers with my 14 year old offspring (if I had one) if I chose to do so. There is no legal cut-off at 14, but younger than 14 would invite prosecution on child abuse laws that are more subject to interpretation, and that’s never a good thing.
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