Posted on 09/09/2008 2:29:35 PM PDT by neverdem
What happens when presidents from more than 100 of the nation's best-known colleges call on lawmakers to consider lowering the drinking age from 21 to 18? Well, a brigade of hyperbolic mommies start screaming at them, that's what.
In the Amethyst Initiative, college presidents have offered a rational, if counterintuitive, plan. Let's stop treating young adults like wards of the state. Mothers Against Drunk Driving (naturally) replied: No debate allowed.
There is plenty of empirical evidence suggesting that the drinking age of 21 is counterproductive. To begin with, it bars parents from educating their own children about alcohol and, like all prohibitions, it fosters criminality.
"Kids are going to drink whether it's legal or illegal," explains Johns Hopkins President William R. Brody. "We'd at least be able to have a more open dialogue with students about drinking as opposed to this sham, where people don't want to talk about it because it's a violation of the law."
Sham, indeed. It begins with the demonization of alcohol. (Mothers Against Drunk Driving once compared alcohol to heroin.) Imbibing is a satisfying and highly pleasurable way to spend a couple of hours. It is completely harmless for the majority of adults. Let's not pretend otherwise.
And by outlawing even the moderate use of alcohol among young adults, society creates a forbidden fruit. It drives students off campus and underground. It creates an incentive to drink as much as possible in the shortest amount of time possible.
According to the presidents, the drinking age has "created an environment of excess consumption and goal-oriented drinking. While fewer individuals aged 18-20 are drinking, those who choose to drink are doing so at dangerous and alarming rates."
Perhaps if young adults were allowed to experience the effects of alcohol in a controlled environment, they would be less inclined to binge later. (Binge drinking, incidentally, is usually defined as the consumption of five or more drinks in a row by men and four or more drinks in a row by women. Let he among us without sin . . . .)
The present drinking age, it can be noted, treats 18- to 20-year-old adults as if they were criminals, pre-emptively outlawing them from partaking in a legal product that other adults — even adults convicted of drunk driving or serious felonies — can enjoy legally.
Every state has the authority to set its own drinking age. They won't. After the 1984 Congress passed the National Minimum Drinking Age Act, the government blackmailed states by threatening to take away 10 percent of federal highway funding.
There is no politician who has the audacity to take on MADD, anyway. No one wants to be accused of willfully hurting children.
Yet, even if MADD were right, the safety of the "children" should never be the sole basis for public policy. Call them naïve or idealistic, but there are still people in this country who believe the word "freedom" matters as well.
If I may indulge, let's extrapolate on a cliche: It's regularly pointed out that young adults can volunteer to serve in Iraq but are prohibited from buying a beer. But young adults are also free to produce children (many children). A young adult can plan the entire course of his or her life by the age of 21. A young adult can serve on a jury and determine the fate a fellow citizen. If a young adult chooses, he or she can act in pornographic films, gamble nightly, smoke several packs of cigarettes or, in some places, even engage in the truly depraved act of becoming a politician.
Yet this same young adult is breaking the law when ordering an appletini?
It makes little sense. And when a large number of college presidents ask, "How many times must we re-learn the lessons of Prohibition?" the answer is: We never learned the lesson the first time.
So, there’s not a problem getting drugs either (and I disagree with you about having to drink to learn to be responsible about it—that comes from the an combination of your upbringing, your personality, your experiences, etc). I ask again, is the best way to teach kids how to be responsible about sex to start letting them have sex at 16? Using your logic, how else can they learn?
susie
Down here on the pot pipeline (Tucson is one of the major layover areas for marijuana imported from Mexico) there is DEFINITELY no problem getting drugs, at least green leafy drugs. Some of the other stuff can be hard to get but that’s just because pot owns so much of the market.
Upbringing can help teach you not to binge out, but in the end the only way to know how much booze you can handle, what it means mentally and physically to drink a beer or 2 beers or 6 beers, is to drink. It’s really like any other physical experience, you don’t know how something is going to effect you until it does.
Age laws don’t stop kids from having sex either. And again, that is indeed how kids learn. Most youth don’t really respect the concept of safe/ unsafe sex until their first pregnancy/ disease scare. A lot of human learning revolves around the words “oh $#!+”.
Because those young girls sure don't drink now, do they? I'm constantly flabbergasted by the "rugged individualist conservatives" I see in these prohibition threads.
Agree I remember when the drinking age was lowered to 18 in th 70’s the teen death rate went sky high teens last words are Hey watch this.
So then, you do agree that we should be teaching our 16 year olds to be responsible about sex by them actually having sex?
susie
BUZZZZZ
Way to create a false choice. I’m not playing your logical fallacy game. Try again without erecting a strawman.
I’m sorry, but I disagree with your logic, and when I present you with a similar situation you refuse to *play*. So, I suppose we’re done. Go have a cold one!
susie
You didn’t present me with a similar situation. You created a false choice, and no I didn’t “play” because accepting other people’s logical fallacies accomplishes nothing.
Here’s the basic reality:
There are things you quite simply cannot learn without doing. Nobody think you could learn to drive without some behind the wheel time. And with good reason, while you can learns lots of theory and all the laws until you actually FEEL a REAL car REALLY responding (or not responding) to what you’re ACTUALLY doing you’re missing vital information about how to drive. Until you actually know what it feels like to have a car not turning as sharply as you want because you’re going too fast you can’t know what it’s like to have a car not turning as sharply as you want because you’re going too fast.
And many things are similar. Drinking definitely. A large part of the effects of drinking is having your body not do what you want it to do because there’s too much booze in it. And just like the driving you can’t know what it feels like until you’ve found out what it feels like.
And as for fornicating responsibly, most folks really don’t understand WHY they need to do that until they get some phone call about what disease they might have or what human being might have been created. You can read all the books in the world, get all the parental lectures possible, but until that “oh $#!+” moment comes, kind of like when the car is going to run into a poll because you’re going to fast for the turn, you don’t really KNOW what they meant.
LOL drinking is not a SKILL! I disagree with your central thesis. There’s clearly nothing else for us to discuss, and yet, you continue....
susie
1. No I don’t have government stats to back up my point of view, rather my point of view is from good old fashioned real life experience. If I’m wrong on that so be it, but I did not witness a massive abuse of alcohol like I did in college in Wisconsin and here at bars locally in the Twin Cities area and elsewhere across the country.
2. Where did I state that I was going to get wasted with my kids? I suggested having some drinks with them to allow them to experience what the alcohol does to their body, their mind etc. A beer or two should suffice for most 17, 18 year olds to make them feel buzzed if they have not already started drinking prior to that. While I agree with you that learning can be done without doing, learning can also be enhanced and reinforced by doing so in this case I’m 100% behind parents drinking a glass or two of wine with their kids and discuss what it feels like so they better understand the effect it has on them (fyi, many homes in England share a glass of port wine after Sunday lunch with kids 10 and up so one glass of pinot grigio or a bud light is not going to kill any kids). I can tell you all I want about an experience but until you go thru it yourself it doesn’t hold the same meaning. Further I did not suggest one should not drink responsibly so again you are out of context with what I am saying.
Of course one should teach their kids to be responsible in all aspects of life. Why you brought sex ed into a discussion about responsible drinking is curious to me. If I was discussing that then I would have expressed a thought on that topic but since I was only speaking about alcohol I did not. Since you asked about sex ed, I do think parents should discuss sex with their kids in an educational but not clinical way. Why we are all so naive to think that outside our homes our kids don’t hear about stuff is beyond me. I would rather tell my kids what I think about sex and how it relates to them/their life than to say nothing at all and let the school systems or their friends tell them what is acceptable and how they should act. I am stunned you would suggest that I should tell my kids to start having sex to help educate them. That is both asinine and so far out of context I dare say I was greatly disturbed to read you suggest that.
Good day to you.
PM
Drinking itself is not a skill. Controlling your drinking rather than letting it control you, and knowing when to say when IS most definitely a skill.
“How about a compromise of 19 years old???”
I don’t know if this is still how it is, but when I was 18 and in the AF, I could drink alcohol on base, but not off base.
Those that are mature enough at 18 to join the military should be allowed to drink and the compromise of drinking at the clubs on base is a good one. I don’t think the average 18-20 year old college kid is as mature as the average 18-20 year old member of the military and certainly the latter that has been to combat and everything else has earned the right to drink.
“Ok so they won’t be underage drinkers, but they will still be drunk drivers.”
Some don’t give a crap until it’s them or someone they love sitting in wheelchair for the rest of their life because of a drunk driving teen. There is a reason that car insurance is so expensive for teens and especially boys. Risk management based on stats is why, not because the insurance companies want to pick on young drivers.
They would less likely buy it for their younger friends than the 21 and older folks are doing it now for those under 21.
If I'm 16 or 17 and the drinking age is 18, I'm going to patiently wait out the 1-2 years, especially since one is still in high school.
Of course, I never even insinuated you said that.
In addition your suggestion that parents have a drink or two with their kids does in no way support lowering the age, so I'm baffled why you bring it up.
You suggested that kid need to experience something (in this case alcohol) in order to learn to be responsible about it opened the door to make other like arguments. I'm sorry that doesn't sit well with you, but if you find it disturbing, that's your problem.
Nothing you have posted has convinced me that changing the drinking age to 18 is a good idea. susie
I disagree, but you have had your say. That’s what I love about FR.
susie
Bravo for telling it like it is.
susie
No,you’re not going to patiently wait! Where on earth did you get such a silly idea? Have you never met a teenager?
susie
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