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.
That is an idea I can get behind....if we lower the age to 18, there a number of kids in HS that are 18 and will be buying alcohol for their school friends...
On the other hand if a young person of 18 can fight for our country why can’t they drink? I think showing them a military ID to buy alochol is a great solution...
And if you think that country is the USA, you're drunk!
I think a base is technically federal land. If I recall correctly, soldiers on Ft. Bliss in El Paso TX could drink on base at age 18 until a year or two ago. There was a few traffic fatalities involving soldiers (I don’t know if they were under 21) and the base commander changed the drinking age to 21 to stem the bad publicity.
Curfews are nothing new, and are certainly not "nanny-statism" by any stretch. What business do KIDS have being out at 2 or 3 in the morning anyway? And with these curfew are always exceptions for working teenagers.
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.
Ummm,... that's already your right, who is arguing otherwise? This thread is about the legal age to purchase alcohol by unsupervised minors.
That’s why the founders had this novel concept of the consent of the governed. If you have it, then everything goes fairly smoothly. If on the other hand, a small but vocal minority attempts to impose a moral position that’s not shared (read 18th Amendment) the outcome is usually nothing short of disasterous.
A law against say premarital sex, to pick an example of a behavior that’s almost universally practiced, might be moral, but nothing good would come of it.
El Paso must be a border city, right? The federal law that regulates the drinking age on military bases, gives commanders that run bases that are (I think) within 50-miles of the border, some flexibility in establishing the base drinking age. On all other bases, however, the drinking age must mirror whatever the state's drinking age is (which of course is 21, if the state wants federal HWY funds).
“And then HS Seniors can supply all of the Freshman?”
Exactly what happened in Michigan when they tried this a few years ago.
>>American teens learn to drink in the unmonitored environment of a basement or the backwoods with their friends.
Saugus MA a couple years ago; every effort was made to make the high school cruise/prom a sober event...
>>A high school senior on his way home from his prom was allegedly driving drunk when he crashed at 7:30 a.m. yesterday into a mother and daughter walking their dog, killing the older woman...Police arrested Jonathan Caruso, 18, of Saugus, who had attended a school-sponsored post-prom harbor cruise in Boston and was bused back to the high school at about 4 a.m., police said. Caruso had two other students in the car, a male and a female, when he drove off the street...
So they had a sober prom followed by a sober cruise and by 4 am, everyone was expected to go home and sleep after a very long day. Instead, these kids go out in the woods
drinking. Beer was found in the trunk of the car, etc.
So booze was the forbidden thing for these teens and sometimes when you’re denied something, you go right out and get it anyway. Look what happened...
http://www.necn.com/pages/landing?blockID=155644&tagID=22399
>>Prosecutors say Caruso admitted to drinking 10 beers. Police say they found beer in the trunk. And say he failed a field sobriety test, even though he would later pass a Breathalyzer test. Prosecutors say Caruso told them he must have fallen asleep. Joe Talluto, Caruso’s friend: “You got to put a limit on it, 4 in the morning what the hell are you going out drinking.” Joe Talluto says he is also Jonathan’s friend. Just one week ago they all attended a mock demonstration of a drinking and driving accident.
(I think the Breathalyzer wasn’t administered till 10 am)
Whether making the legal age lower, who knows if it’ll help, but sometimes when you make something forbidden,
the allure for it only gets stronger.
Just so I do not misunderstand you, you are arguing FOR the Nanny State that removes personal responsibility from people otherwise considered as Adults?
People drank because the water wasn't any good. Typhoid and cholera epidemics were as common as a cold. Medicine, until the 1950's, was a guessing game, cloaked in mysteries that would make a Freemason blush, and they buried their mistakes.
You had as much chance with a patent medicine as you did in a hospital. At least with an opium based over-the-counter nostrum, you didn't suffer as much while you died.
MADD, however, has destroyed more of the Constitution than any other single organization in American history.
You’ve had to be 21 (since all states have had 21 as the legal drinking age since 1984) on any U.S. base within our borders since 1995. DoD Instruction 1015.10
Are you suggesting that people between 16 and 21 years of age don't buy gasoline (and therefore pay into the Federal Highway Fund)?
BTW, I joined the Navy a long time ago when I was 17 years of age. At that time (1964) you could join the Army with parental consent when you were 16 years old.
Aha, didn’t know that. That’s good information.
Not necessarily. There are few (if any now) states that allow someone under the age of 21 to buy, possess or consume alcohol in public, even in the presence of their parents/legal guardian. So, in many states if you were having dinner at a restaurant with your 20-year old, that restaurant would be breaking a criminal law if the served your child even with your permission. And, depending on the state, your child could be prosecuted as well.
Some states do allow for the consumption of alcohol by those under the age of 21 in the confines of a private home, and with the present of a legal guardian. Some other states, however, do not. To me, that's the absolute definition of "nanny state".
Just so I don't misunderstand you, you are arguing that the "Nanny State" derives its title from the fact that it makes ANY laws that prohibit certain activities deemed to deleterious to society or individuals? (i.e., all laws are bad.)
I’m in favor of it, as long as we have some kind of “adult responsibility class” in high schools (another thing parents should teach, but don’t). It’s really more than a birthday when you turn 18.
One of the more stupid things I did when I was a kid was supplying alcohol to my friends. Because I looked older and carried myself well, and bought booze in neighborhoods where people were lacking the cultural cues as to being able to guess my age, I could get away with it at 17 (when the drinking age was 19). This, of course, was idiotic and irresponsible. Thank God no one was killed or injured.
No he's saying that the National Minimum Drinking Age Act of 1984 (signed by Reagan) denies federal highway funds to any state that has a minimum drinking age lower than 21.
When my state lowered the drinking age to 18 it became infinitely easier for me to get booze at the age of 15. It only took about a week to find several stores I could buy from with out being Id’ed. With hindsight being 20/20 and the wisdom gained in the ensuing 40 years lowering the drinking age to 18 is, and was, a very bad idea.
The Founders saw a priori restraint laws as evil. Only those laws which attempted to set a penalty for actual harm done to another's life, property, or liberty were considered valid topics for governance.
Using your logic, the Brady Bunch is within their Rights to call for more gun control. After all, according to folks like you and them... It isn't about the "rightness" of a Law but about what COULD happen.
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