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.
Maybe I’m making some broad assumptions, but in my rather large state of Texas, minors can drink with adult supervision, even in public, as long as it’s not getting out of hand (kids drinking to the point of dangerous intoxication, etc.) And in several other states I’ve visited, this was the case as well. I don’t agree with state laws that take this out of parents’ hands; I’d guess these states are the most leftist ones in the northeast or northwest.
Good info on the border bases but you missed this one by a mile.
You can drink in a private residence with parental consent in(30 states): Alaska, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Illinois, Iowa, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Carolina, Texas, Virginia, Washington, Wisconsin, and Wyoming
You can drinkin a bar with your parents in(10 states): Kansas, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Nevada, New York, Ohio, Texas, Wisconsin, and Wyoming
Looks like Bliss was a bit of an oddity. Found an old FR thread about Bliss being the last holdout and changing the drinking age to 21 in 2008.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2023177/posts
Good catch. I recall visiting Europe (especially France and Italy) and seeing the natives giving their children of all ages wine with their meals.
I'm one of those Baptists who have openly disagreed with my pastor when he said that drinking was a sin. The Bible gives several examples including Jesus turning water into wine. It does warn us to use moderation though.
In my case I've cut back to about a six-pack a year because of my Type II diabetes - and so far this year I'm two beers behind schedule.
Isn’t that almost exactly what I said - some states you can drink in the privacy of your own home, and some (although I didn’t know how many - if any) states allow you to drink in a public setting with your parents.
So you would advocate for ANY behavior up to, but not including, actually committing the tort? How about if I point my .44 magnum revolver (which is unloaded) at you and pull the trigger? No harm done, huh?
If you'll read my earlier posts, I don't disagree with reducing the drinking age up to a certain point and for certain individuals (servicemembers, etc.) I'm just trying to get at the rationale some use to arrive at that result. Condemning all laws merely because they're laws (constraints on behavior) is asinine.
Probably.
I interpreted "Few if any" as being a lot less than 10. Entirely on me.
Oddly enough, and for purely medical reasons, I think that the drinking age should remain at 21 years. Here’s the reasoning.
The human brain is very flexible in its neuronal development until the early ‘20s. When foreign chemicals are introduced into the body, that can transcend the blood-brain barrier, it permanently alters the development of the brain to adjust to their presence. And the effect is cumulative.
The younger a person is when these chemicals are introduced, the stronger the impact. Even worse, if the chemicals are addictive, there is a cross-over effect that makes the brain more susceptible to other addictive substances.
The human brain has 50 or so major neurotransmitter chemicals, and a slew of other, minor ones, in a highly complex interaction, and alcohol is almost unique among chemicals for impacting almost every one of them.
While some people are also afflicted with a genetic disposition to alcoholism, for the most part, the benefits of delaying the consumption of any addictive substances, especially alcohol, until the early 20’s are threefold.
1) A person who abstains until that age is far less likely to ever become addicted to anything, and their use of such chemicals after that age is considerably more moderate as well.
2) While it is still possible to become addicted after that age, the addiction is far weaker, and more easy to break.
For years, the assumption was that the consumption of alcohol was what made a person weak, by damaging the judgment center in the frontal lobe of the brain. (In the 1980s, the US Army determined that alcoholics were incapable of making sound judgmental decisions, so should be denied leadership positions for a minimum of six months after they had discontinued drinking. But this was unfeasible due to the high rates of alcoholism in the military at that time.)
And while this is true, a newer argument is that because a person began drinking at an early age, it permanently injured them so that they drank because they had been weakened. They were more susceptible to alcohol addiction.
3) The damage to the body of drinking before the early 20’s is not limited to the brain. It is known to cause some damage to several organs, including the stomach, liver, kidneys, pancreas, esophagus, cardio-pulmonary system, and reproductive system. While this damage does not usually result in acute symptoms in youth, in later adulthood it can show up in several pathologies.
In conclusion, taking all of this into account, the best childhood is one with minimal amounts of such chemicals, including very common ones like caffeine, nicotine, many pharmaceutical and illegal drugs, but most importantly alcohol.
But after age 21, the body and brain is much more capable of protecting itself, assuming it hasn’t already been damaged.
Just what young drivers need to help keep their already crappy concentration and reflexes while texting and blaring music and a carfull of other distracting teens.
I don’t see a single negative consequence coming from this. I don’t see young kids dying, I don’t see them plowing into other people and killing them, I don’t see property damage, I don’t see lawsuits from parents of the dead against liquor companies because their teens drove and drank and died, I don’t see lawsuits from one family to another for one kid killing their kid. I don’t see more young lives ruined and cut short, or cutting short other peoples’ lives by this. Nope, no problems whatsoever.
What other laws would you opposed due to potential abuse?
Would you allow gun control based on the potential of murder?
You are being absurd.
Your ideas are very harmful and have nothing to do with liberty.
Libertine and Liberty are two different things.
Yet another sterling example of why so many of us lament the death of the "reasonable man standard".
When you have a real, logical, and defensible argument... Go ahead and post it.
Comparing the imminent threat of physical harm to an 18 year old having a few beers ought to invoke a variant of Godwin's law.
I don't want to share the road with a drunk of any age.
I guess we need prohibition, eh?
I understand that you don't want to answer the question.
21 is fine but a soldier has shown a definite degree of maturity and should be able to buy alcohol with a military ID.
I don’t know. After 24 years in June, I have seen a whole lot of problems with military personnel and alcohol. Many are getting into trouble and even some cases getting kicked out for not being able to handle the alcohol. In Italy, the age is 18 for everyone so I have seen 18 year old military folks drink....in SOME cases, not pretty. No different than college kids though. If only kids would not drink to get drunk then 18 would not be a problem at all.
My sarcasm was better than yours... ;)
When I’m standing at the checkout or sitting in a restaurant, graying hair visible, holding a 3-year-old, buying a bottle of fine wine, it should be apparent to any moron that I am over 21 - so please stop carding me already!
I think he’s suggestion that the Federal Government extracts our money, then forces us to dance to their tune like monkeys to get some of it back.
They can’t force the states to pass drinking laws the Feds prefer but they can bribe them with their own money to do it. And 10,000 other even more important things.
So what did people do pre-prohibition? Was childhood alcoholism a problem? Not being snarky, just a question.
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