This author — an adult, parent, and responsible consumer of alcohol — has always been in favor of raising the legal age for anything (driver’s licenses, alcohol purchase, military enlistment, and voting) to 25. I’m not alone in this thinking, as evidenced by the age minimums of rental car companies, car insurance companies, and our very own constitution.
The most curious desire to lower the drinking age is the concern over binge drinking, that somehow the law (not the person) is to blame for the frequent and often dangerous consumption of alcohol by many of today’s college youth. Take note young'uns: if you blame the law (or anyone or anything else) for your behavior instead of taking responsibility for your choices, consuming alcohol is not the only — or even the most important — thing you should be denied.
Article comments
1 - Jordan Richardson
Wondering how you feel about the lower drinking age in other countries, such as Canada (18 or 19, depending on the province).
In fact, the United States does have the highest legal drinking age of all of the countries in the Americas (save for Paraguay). And there are many countries in Europe that have no legal drinking age for private consumption, but do indeed have a purchase age. It looks as though the United States does indeed have one of the highest legal drinking ages in the world.
I guess I wonder what that means. Are American youth believed to be responsible enough to be charged with the defense of the country but not responsible enough to enjoy a beer? I think the problem is not what could occur with a lower drinking age, as youth below the drinking age certainly don't allow something petty like the law deter them from boozing it up like rabid dogs, but rather what the law says about how we view youth responsibility.
Take for instance the legal smoking age. In most states in America, the legal smoking age is 18. So what is the law actually saying here? It's okay for youth to smoke, but it's not okay for them to drink. Why is there such a distinction?
I believe that the American youth tabling this dissenting point of view need to broaden their scope, sure, as there are a number of "age injustices" in the United States. Their preoccupation with drinking certainly harms their cause, as does their flawed presentation. Perhaps if they prepared their statements with a little less frat boy enthusiasm and a little more investigative questioning, they might accomplish their goals.
2 - Lisa Solod Warren
I do find it strange that our laws are all over the place; one for smoking, one for drinking, one for driving, one for the military, one for renting a car, and so on. . . I think kids drive too early and probably drink too late; if that is, they can serve our country, I think they should be able to buy a drink. What I don't get is our pre-occupation with getting drunk. Kids go out to get drunk. So do adults. People binge drink like crazy. That is where education needs to start. Getting drunk every weekend, at every party, on every cruise or vacation, or just any and every chance one has, means you have a problem, no matter what you call it. I think a cocktail or a glass of wine with dinner, a beer on a cold day, are all fine--but I never have understood this pre-occupation with getting pie-faced drunk every time you pick up a drink. You want to have a drink each night when you come home? Okay. But three, four, five? Or even two every single night? What are we numbing? Why do so many teens and young people feel the need to get completely drunk every time they drink? That, I think, is the problem with making it legal any younger. It doesn't, however, seem like most young people(and lots of older ones) are making good decisions about drinking.
3 - Paul W. Marglin
Most of the 21 year old laws support comes from mothers against drunk driving which is actually a veiled temperance league.
4 - Fugly
If you're old enough to be tried as an adult, serve in the military, or vote in federal elections, you're old enough to drink--no ands, ifs, or buts.
5 - SK
I think legal age has to be removedand drinking should be encouraged by special incentives by the federal and state governments as it will grow economy in this difficult time.
6 - Jordan Richardson
Nice try, SK.
7 - CallmeMaddy
Ok, I'm 17, but I'm not much of a drinker to be honest, but I do think the drinking age should be lowered. 17-year-olds are going to drink even if it's illegal, so we might as well make it legal.
8 - Don Cie
Monitor Drinking to Teach Moderate Drinking
I have commented on this subject a few times on NPR radio when the Dean from a Vermont college (I believe he was from Middlebury College) approached this subject a few years ago.
I believe that the best way to handle the lowering of the drinking age would be to place some restrictions on the young adults starting at the age of 18 to to perhaps 24 years of age. Perhaps limiting consumption of a 1 liter bottle of either beer or wine, not both, on a daily basis via use of a monthly issued punch card at a state or local government agency or by a liquor store itself could be a possibility. It may sound a little complicated and/or unnecessary but protection to abuse is important. Other means of monitoring are open but a method to limit access and stress its importance can be a teaching aid to young adults. Kegs of beer and hard liquor would not be accessible to age group that venerable to abuse. the daily limit to beer and wine could be change to perhaps a daily six pack of beer and/or daily bottle of wine at the age of 20 or 21 while maintaining a restriction to kegs and hard liquor until the age of 23, 24 or 25. Most people of this age are out of the colleges and/or of an age where they are more mature thus limiting the contact with the younger less mature college students and being more mature, would understand the perils of over indulgence better than an 18, 19 or 20 year old.
A young person joining the military and willing to lay down their lives for our freedom and security should be exempt from all restrictions and able to drink at their peril!
9 - klondikekitty
I agree with you 100 percent, Diane! Young people at age 18 are no more ready to be responsible drinkers than they are to be responsible soldiers, automobile drivers, OR voters! Parents whose children are now coming of age have worked hard to give their children everything they didn't have when they were growing up, and it is now rearing its ugly head in American society -- most of these kids have been handed everything without having to do anything themselves to get it, and now have this attitude that the world owes them something, maybe everything. Time for America's young people to find out what the REAL world is like, you work for what you get, instead of expecting somebody to hand it to you, or you don't get it. More mature attitudes need to be cultivated before you are handed the privileges AND the responsibilities of adulthood.
I also take issue with the argument that more exposure to alcohol at an earlier age will result in less alcohol and substance abuse and fewer deaths from alcohol poisoning by inexperienced drinkers -- excuse me, but I know people whose parents decided to allow them to drink at home instead of risking them going out somewhere else and getting drunk, and most of these people are some of the most actively practicing alcoholics I know!!
10 - Matthew T. Sussman
Then let 18-year-old soldiers drink.
11 - Joanne Huspek
Eighteen year old soldiers used to be able to drink. I can remember going on the base with my dad and seeing vending machines filled with beer for 25 cents a bottle.
I would be for lowering the drinking age and raising the driving age, such as is done in other countries. Or, as Diana has suggested, raising everything to 25, including military service, voting, and the age of majority.
12 - STM
I must say I was shocked the first time I went to the US and was forced to show ID ("New South Wales' drivers' licence - where's that, man? Oh, Australia ... hey, you speak pretty good English") in just about every bar I went to, having been allowed to drink legally in Australia for three years.
My view: if you're old enough to vote, old enough to drive, old enough to pay tax, old enough to be conscripted into the armed forces and packed off to war, old enough to buy a packet of smokes, old enough to need your own passport, old enough to be considered an adult in terms of any criminal convictions you might acquire over the age of 18 (because you are suddenly considered old enough to be responsible), then you are old enough to drink legally.
The ridiculous part of this is that in America, the legal drinking age means diddly squat anyway - people get fake IDs, or drink illegally at private parties, so it's hardly making any difference.
I'd say most of the parties I went to in the US had large numbers of people aged between 18-21 who were drinking illegally.
Big deal.
What are you America? The ultimate nanny state?
13 - Dr Dreadful
That's nothing, Stan. The second day of my first visit to the States, I went to a TGI Friday's and decided - naturally enough, one would have thought - to order a beer. Fortunately I just happened to have not taken my passport out of my jacket pocket yet, or I wouldn't have got a piddling drop. Being from the UK, where one doesn't habitually carry ID, I was unprepared for the way things are in the Land of the Free (smirk © Pablo 2008), especially since back home I had been legally able to drink for sixteen years.
It could still easily have been Diet Pepsi time, since the waitress - like most of her compatriots - not only didn't have a passport herself but didn't even know what one looked like.
14 - STM
Is that fair dinkum, Doc ... you had to show your passport to prove you were legally able to drink, what in your thirties?
These are a chain of restaurants, aren't they, rather than bars.
Truly, that is bizarre (unless, of course, you've held your age extremely well :) .
On that note, though, I had to use my passport on a couple of occasions too because they wouldn't accept my NSW driver's licence - which I was (legally) using to drive in America, and even to hire cars, etc. It was good enough to enable me to deliver a car from San Diego to Virginia Beach. One guy at the door of a bar in SF said: Australia! Sorry, we don't accept European licences)
Mind you, I wasn't driving that well in view of the fact Americans have bizarrely put their steering wheels in the passenger seat, and insist on driving on the wrong side of the road, but it WAS legal.
The other side of the coin was that production of my British passport, which I'd used to travel to the UK so I wouldn't have to line up in the foreign queue at Heathrow with my Aussie passport, once got me a pretty damn good date with a very nice American waitress who had been told by another woman in the restaurant about "the British guy", so I 'spose it's not all bad :)
15 - STM
Like you Doc, I do love American women ...
16 - Dr Dreadful
Yep, TGIF is a chain of US-style burger joints. Not sure if they have 'em Down Under, although there's at least one in London.
Problem was that the passport was the only thing I had. I didn't drive at the time, so no licence, and as I said, Brits don't carry ID cards.
Luckily for me, the waitress went and checked with the manager, who'd been to Tijuana once and so at least knew what an international border looked like. Cheers.
17 - STM
Lol. What, she'd never seen a passport so didn't know that it could be used as ID?
Ah, deary me - those Yanks ... they're a bloody weird mob, aren't they? A lot of the time, they just leave me completely gobsmacked and scratching my head.
You must have lots of fun - daily - living amongst them :) Lucky you've got an American missus who can explain all the idiosyncracies, and of course that allows you to get used to the strange accent much more easily.
18 - college student
When I turned 18, I realized I am now able to do anything I want without a parent. I decide if I want to go to college, join the military, or try to find a job any where I can. I can travel alone; I can get married, try to win money on scratch off tickets, by smokes, drive past 11 at night, vote, go to a strip club, get married, and go to jail. The list could go on and on.
At 18, you’re an adult, but why can I not go out to dinner with my family and have a beer with the rest of the adults in my family? I can do anything else that they can in America, but I cannot have a beer. The drinking age of 21 seems like they put the ages 18 and 21 on a piece of paper, put them into a hat, and pulled out 21.
There are many reasons why the drinking age should be lowered. Can someone tell me why it should stay 21? AND NO, not being responsible is not a reason. Remember, at 18 you can do anything you want, so we must be responsible enough to drink.
One thing I see bad about the drinking age of 18 is adults in high school would be able to drink. That would be a good reason not to lower the age to 18. Can anyone come up with anything else?
For the ones that think we are just a bunch of binge drinking frat guys... your wrong. When you’re in college far from home, with no car, what else is there really to do on the weekend? We work hard all week long and we want to go have a good time with our friends. The only thing there is to do in my college town is go to a bar... o wait we can’t. We are not going to go outside and play a nice game of tag for our entertainment. So we go to the frat house and have a few or more beers and have some fun. Yes sometimes we drink more than we should... people over 21 do that too.?!
Those are just some of my views on the drinking age.
19 - Nicholas
I don;t care what you think. The fact is that I can go to war and die, and dammit I will drink a beer if I want to. There is no fervor across the board because I feel it justified that insurance rates are higher for younger people. I don't mind that. What I do mind is nut cases like you believing that somehow their opinion can tramp the rights of millions of American citizens. If you treat me like an adult it is all or nothing. You either need to try anyone under 25 as a minor, or when an 18 year old is declared an adult, you treat them like one. There is no middle ground. Once a person is declared an adult there is no gray area. It is all or nothing. An entire generation of Americans is being criminalized for what is very arguably their right as a citizen, and as a human being, that no government, especially not the 'leader of the free world' can take away.
20 - Cindy
Young people at age 18 are no more ready to be responsible drinkers than they are to be responsible...automobile drivers, OR voters!
Sounds like a problem with the parents to me.
college student #18 and Nicholas #19 make the best points, I think. I support them.
The children I am responsible for guiding do not drink by their own choice.
When my niece went to Greece, with her class her mother signed a note allowing her to drink, as the drinking age on her cruise permitted it. She was 16. She had wine or a drink with dinner. For a while she might have a drink at a family barbecue. She tried it but decided she didn't want to drink. And of her high school friends, she was the non-drinker.
Perhaps parents and adults in a family need to become more responsible by developing relationships with their children that involve trust and being honorable, instead of expecting societies to create laws which to me promote avoiding such relationships.
21 - Cindy
One more thing. Treating teens and children with respect, as intelligent, capable human beings; making yourself approachable instead of authoritarian; being able to discuss instead of judge; trusting them to make decisions based on your good relationship with them...these are things that create room for personal growth and development of personal responsibility in children. Be reasonable yourself if you want reasonable children and responsible teens.
22 - Connery Hall
Ok Diana. I'll let you know. When I turn twenty-five to be able to join the army. That way I won't have wasted my parents money going to college and then getting a well respected job after years of education to put to waste when there is a draft and all the twenty-five year olds have to go off to war.
Well thought out.
You let me know when that bill gets passed.