Posted on 03/04/2002 10:49:56 AM PST by A.J.Armitage
Conversly, when the drinking age was 21, the same 18 year olds, although still drinking, would have been more low key.
I was around thirty and still in barroom/night club mode when they lowered the age back in the seventies.
Suddenly the local high school football team was hanging out in front of the bathrooms, making nasty remarks to the women and elbowing all the men going to take a leak.
It took a couple of really great brawls before the kiddies got the message, but things did quiet down.
You're right about the Constitution, but I don't think, as a philosophical matter, that any government at all has a right to make laws against substances.
Balrog666 calls someone a fascist..
Ahhh... the irony..
Well, not quite. CASA grudgingly allows that underage drinking might be OK when "it is a basic component of a particular cultural event or religious ritual." This is not very reassuring, especially when coupled with CASA's implicit criticism of state laws that "limit police authority in investigating a home where underage drinking is suspected." Who decides when drinking has enough cultural or religious significance to justify letting the kids imbibe? Not their parents, it seems. They are "too often unwitting co-conspirators who see underage drinking and occasional bingeing as a rite of passage."
They basically DO NOT think parents should have any say in it.
This group would have not been real pleased with the thimblefull of anisette we were allowed to have as kids on Christmas, or the wine (watered down for the longest time) we had with Sunday dinner.
Alcohol was not some sort of "demon drink" in my house that was poo-pooed until the state said you could have some.
And THAT I absolutely agree with. - #160 LG77-
A question. -- The 14th amendment says, [in part] : "No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."
-- Does this section of the 14th apply to stupid, unconstitutional, prohibitive laws that deprive persons of property such as alcohol without due process?
211 posted by tpaine
Yep. You have the right to fight them just as vehemently as you do the Fed, but you lose the constitutionality argument.
I lose? -- Why? -- I doubt that you can explain your opinion using constitutional fact.
And if you REALLY don't like the laws in your state, well, that's why we have more than one state in these United States. You are free to move to one you like better. That's what I did.
No, we have a U.S. constitution that says, in effect, -- I don't have to move, as quoted above in the plain language of the 14th. -- A state has no power to pass such law. -- Words have meaning.
It's puzzling, - why would you deny your own individual liberty, as the 14th attempts to protect?
I agree to a certain extent. True, the federal government doesn't have that right but, in keeping with the spirit of the 9th and 10th Amendments, the various state governments should be allowed to decide these issues. That is the true essence of federalism. If Minnesota wants a drinking age of 45 and Nevada wants a drinking age of 3 months, that should certainly be allowed to happen in a constitutional republic. Of course, being a Minnesotan who likes Sam Adams (the beer and patriot), I would fight that kind of law tooth and nail!
A freeper attorney explained this state prohibitory law issue one night some time ago:
--- State criminal law covers the protection of children. Thus, - criminal prohibitory law is OK. --
But states/communitys can only regulate exchanges of goods & services between adults, in public, using civil law.
-- Governments do NOT have the power to criminally prohibit nonviolent conduct, nor common products used in private; -- in constitutional theory, of course.
-- Obviously, -- this view of the law is being violated on a massive scale, by all levels of government.
I assure you that I am not 'twisting' the words of the 14th. - It was written to stop states from writing unconstitutional law against individuals, & from ignoring the BOR's.
The congressional debates of 1868, prior to ratification, are just a couple of clicks away, & prove my point.
First, the government has no business telling anyone, whatever his age, what substances he can consume.
So, if a police officer sees an eight-year-old drinking, smoking, or taking drugs, it's none of his business? Your argument would also require that a three-year-old who accidentally kills his baby brother be arrested and charged with manslaughter or murder.
You go from making sensible arguments, to losing all good sense. It's just common sense, that you need an official age of majority. The unavoidable imperfection of such a convention is no more a convincing argument against it, than it would be against any other social convention.
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