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Instead, children should learn to drink wine or beer with meals, as they do in Europe.

My (Wisconsinite) parents drink wine with dinner nearly every night, and I frequently did so too. When I went off to Madison for college - one of the nation's binge drinking meccas - I had no desire to do the same thrashing of my liver as so many of my classmates did. I had a different view of what alcohol was "good for."

Now, as for the people who saw it as their duty to be drunk for 72 hours starting Thursday night, even they aren't worse for the wear. By senior year, they no longer got drunk all of the time, and for the most part were intelligent enough to refrain from driving or jumping off of balconies.

(Most) People (eventually) learn about alcohol. Why not give them the opportunity to do it at a younger age, and under the supervision of their parents?

Tack that on to the argument that this is one area of policy that the government doesn't need to dictate, and I think you have reason enough to kill the National Minimum Drinking Age. After all, it's limited prohibition.

(Most) People (eventually) learn about alcohol. Why not give them the opportunity to do it at a younger age, and under the supervision of their parents?

Because that would make entirely too much sense.

I was the same. Had a glass of wine (or two, occasionally) just about every night with dinner from age 13 on. When I reached college, I thought all the other freshmen whooping it up with kegs and crappy vodka looked ridiculous. I'll take one glass of good Gewurtraminer over 8 plastic cups of over-foamed Bud Light any day of the week.

On this THREAD, the group CASA states:

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.