But what about drunk driving? Mark Kleiman, predictibly, has some eminently sensible suggestions:
Setting the minimum legal drinking age at 21 saves lives by reducing drunk driving, and not just among the 18-to-21's; if 18-year-old high school seniors can buy beer at the supermarket, then 16-year-old high school sophomores have access to it. Common sense and evidence agree: drinking and driving by people who are both inexperienced drinkers and inexperienced drivers is really, really dangerous.
Setting the minimum legal drinking age at 21 also encourages disrespect for the law and encourages young adults to acquire and use false identification documents, which is not a social practice we want to encourage just right now. Moreover, that policy insultingly treats people who are adults for all other purposes as if they were still children, and deprives them of lawful access to an activity that forms part of the normal U.S. social scene and which some of them enjoy. And it may (the evidence isn't clear) lead those who are drinking illegally rather than legally to do so irresponsibly rather than responsibly.
Now, given those facts, what do you want to do about it?
How about looking for policies that would offset the bad effects of lowering the drinking age? They aren't hard to find.
To address the specific problem of youthful drinking and driving, we could -- as some states have already -- change the drunk-driving laws so as to forbid drivers under 21 to drive with any detectable level of alcohol. (These are called "ZT" [for "zero tolerance"] laws.) For someone still learning both to drive and to hold his or her liquor, even a little bit under the influence can be too much. Anyway, a bright line (and zero is a very bright line) may be better observed than a rule that enables the proverbial "two beers."
To address the more general problem of excessive drinking by teenagers (not to mention the still more general problem of excessive drinking, period) we could raise alcohol taxes. This summer has provided a useful object lesson in the Law of Demand: when gasoline prices went up, people drove less. Drinking is the same, especially heavy drinking. Price matters.
I'd add that we should strengthen this with something that Mark himself suggested to me a while ago: driver's licenses for convicted DUIs that tell bartenders not to serve you. Combined with a zero tolerance policy, this would be a pretty effective deterrant to drunk driving for teens. Right now, groups of teens drink together, in secret. But if your friends can drink at a bar, and you can't, you'll find your social life dramatically curtailed. Teenagers are very sensitive to penalties that separate them from their friends. I'd lower the drinking age to 16, as in Europe, but require licenses to show that you haven't had a DUI.
This would also be a more effective deterrent than the current tactic of suspending licenses for DUI, incidentally, since what happens right now is that a lot of chronic drunks get on the road without one. Let them drive to work--but make it damned difficult for people who drink and drive to get their hands on alcohol.
All Military personal can buy liquor on base. All you need is your Military ID. I was drinking at 18 at the base clubs.
As is usually the case, Megan makes eminent sense to me.
I lived and worked for a long time on a big university campus and the amount of scofflaw behavior over drinking was... breathtaking, even if unsurprising. There was a game between the campus bars, the local police, the students, Greek organizations and of course the beer-company sponsored athletic program. Every once in a while the cops would bust bars for underage drinking (conspiracy theories abounded over exactly who got busted, of course, especially given bar owners' influence in town government). Most of the rest of time it was business as usual.
By all means make a DUI conviction suck, prosecute assault, etc., but I don't get the 21 year old drinking age. Two wrongs don't make a right.
AS a Canadian your drinking age laws are one of the very few thing about the US that I feel are positively lunatic. That and Televangelism and the two are related.
As for your comment about Iraq, the number for those under 21 who are KIA is about 700*. That is 700 people to whom the country said yes you can bear the awesome responsibility of wearing the uniform of your country's armed forces, participating in battle; do ,see and have done to you terrible acts of raw violence, but you could be arrested if you come home from your deployment and get caught relating your experiences to your friends over a beer. And it is against the law for you to let them buy you a beer in a Pub/Bar to hear your tales of derring-do.
I would ever so love a member of the media to get Liddy Dole's answer to that aspect of the debate. I read somewhere that as she pushed for the drinking age raise to 21 in the eighties she would have really preferred it be 25.
In Ontario the legal age is 19 and while i think 18 is morally right, compromising to 19 is fine because it should help keep it away from people high school as most of your immediate peers would have graduated.
*someone at National Review used that statistic not long ago in an article.
I think it's a great idea to prevent people with DUI's from drinking in bars, but I question how effective it would be to do that by putting a mark on the drivers' license. Underage college students buy fake ID's all the time. What makes you think that people with the marked licenses wouldn't also just buy a fake?
I'd add that we should strengthen this with something that Mark himself suggested to me a while ago: driver's licenses for convicted DUIs that tell bartenders not to serve you.
Utterly unworkable. Though people who drive often forget it, there ARE other forms of identification other than drivers licenses. So unless you're going to restrict the ability to drive to people with drivers licenses (obviously unconstitutional), you can easily get around this by using a passport, other form of ID, etc.
Here's a suggestion that nobody's mentioned: legalize all the other drugs! I'm sure there are tons of kids who wouldn't drink if only they could do other drugs, which are far more fun, far less deadly, and don't turn you into a slobbering idiot. Ecstasy and marijuana, for example, don't have much effect on driving ability. Ecstasy is especially relevant since people use it in about the same environment and for the same reasons as people use ecstasy (it produces euphoric effects, lowers inhibitions, encourages dancing and socialization, etc.).
If we're going to raise alcohol taxes, then I need advance warning so I can invest in MD20/20 futures.
Instead of an age limit, why not limit alcohol sales to those with at least a high school diploma? This would prevent seniors buying booze for juniors and sophomores, and provide an incentive to finish high school.
Just remove all age limits and be done with it. We could probably save more lives by making it illegal for children to eat cheeseburgers and drink sodas, but we don't.
Sorry – it should be "for the same reasons as people use alcohol."
I agree with Megan that the consequences of a DUI should be different than what they are now. Getting a DUI should be unpleasant, but it seems to be a crime where the punishment is way out of proportion to the offense. The fact that you MIGHT have killed someone while DUI shouldn't give the state the right to punish you as if you had. For most people a DUI is a career killer, and imposes a burden beyond the severity of the crime committed. Especially in light of the ridiculously low BAC standards state have enacted. Very few people cannot safely operate a vehicle with a BAC of .08.
"Ecstasy and marijuana, for example, don't have much effect on driving ability."
This is not true in the case of marijuana.
This hasn't been true for quite some time. Since the 80's or early 90's the drinking age on every US military base has matched the local civilian law. It's not at all uncommon for military personnell to drink legally while stationed overseas for a couple of years, return to the US and then have to wait a year or two before drinking legally again.
Vaildog makes a great point about the ridiculously low blood alcohol levels states have enacted (thanks to the zealots at MADD). Most responsible adult couples can go out to dinner, share a bottle of wine over a leisurely meal, and drive safely home. They shouldn't have to risk jail time for that if they are driving safely.
Eating while driving is probably more dangerous that driving with a BAC at .08, and talking on the phone definitely is, probably even with hands-free equipment. There is a fair amount of evidence that a greatly disproportionate number of drunk driving fatalities occur with the chronic recidivist drunk drivers who exceed .08 BAC by a wide margin. I'd favor raising the limit back to .10, imposing far more draconian penalties, even for first-time offenders, if they exceeded, say, .12 BAC, and treating offenders above, say, .15 BAC, as we should first time convicted violent criminals, which I think should be far more harsh than is now the case.
I'd also get rid of the road blocks which the police set up to check everyone, without probable cause. They use a lot of resources to target the people who really aren't posing the greatest threat to public safety, while imposing costs on the wholly innocent.
you don't want to raise the price of alcohol and drive kids to the cheaper ways to get drunk like (e.g.) grain or malt liquor (kind of a joke). what you'd really want to do is keep one really, really cheap watery beer, and price everything harder out of range of the kids. but increasing the price of alcohol generally is just going to drive the kids to drink (e.g.) super crappy vodka, which i don't think is any better than the current situations.
College kids, especially underage ones, already drink mostly the kind of vodka that comes in plastic handles and sits on the bottom shelf of the liquor stores. Taxes wouldn't cause them to drink crappier liquor because they're already drinking the crappiest stuff out there. I guess some of them that go to school in certain geographic areas might start drinking moonshine, though.
Maybe we should just raise the driving age to 21.
"It's appalling that someone can go get killed in Iraq, but not buy a beer."
I like where you're going with this. Make "underage" drinking a privilege not a right. You want the "right" to drink, you better demonstrate you're trustworthy enough to do so.
At the very least we better get those drinker-registration programs underway. And let's close those teen/mom party drinking loopholes.
Eh, I guess that's not where you're going. But the simple fact is many/most(?) aren't responsible enough to deal with drinking. And rather than throwing the book at someone and locking them away for 25 years when they screw up while drinking I think it makes sense to wait for them to legally drink until they have a little more perspective in life. If that causes someone to lose the "right" to drink and act like an idiot with their friends I suppose I'm ok with that.
Naturally I'm not including the casual drinker in here, but seriously who is the casual teen drinker? Does he sit back and sip a martini? What's the point for an 18 or 19 year old? He's doing it for the effect and the fun. For every responsible sip a glass-of-wine occasionally with dinner there's 5 idiots who thinks it's cool to get hammered and will crash through your living room window with their car, etc.
I saw one college president on tv, opposed to the age lowering, arguing that iresponsible behaviors needed to be controlled. Obvious question: what does age have to do with irresponsible behavior?
So the "bright line" should be behavior related and not age related if it is the behavior that needs to be controlled.
mj: The old joke goes: "I drive much better after smoking marijuana. When I'm high, every car's a cop car!"
I'd add that we should strengthen this with something that Mark himself suggested to me a while ago: driver's licenses for convicted DUIs that tell bartenders not to serve you.
In addition to the above critique, I'd also ask what's stopping someone from ordering 2 drinks and giving 1 away?
It may be a hassle paying them afterwards, but I truly doubt that this would effect anyone's social life.
And I doubt that lowering the drinking age would have much effect on the drinking habits of 18 year olds. Having graduated from High School in Canada, there was plenty of binge-drinking going on there as well. My high school threw a graduation party where alcohol was served, but the only way to get there was by bus (no cars allowed), with the tacit admissio that most everyone would be drunk (and that was awfuly close to the mark). And this was with a legal drinkig age of 19.
I am skeptical that once my classmates tured 19, they were suddenly introspective on their drinking habits. Has anyone compared the rates of alcohol consumption for 20 year olds in Canada and the U.S.A.? 21 year olds? I think that would be highly relevant to the argument at hand.
So Will Allen is willing to sacrifice the occasional dead child, mom, dad, or crippled innocent bystander so that more people can drink a beverage and enjoy the intoxicating effects on their body as they act a little less-then rationally and clearly in doing so.
So we have harsh penalties for the guy that kills someone or destroys someones life. That'll teach 'em!
It's not like drinking provides this great protection for society that we -must- deal with the costs because of the benefits it provides.
It's drinking. I'm not saying outlaw it. And I would agree that you harshly punish offenders. But I'd also suggest that hand in hand with that you raise the bar and the requirements. A drinking license is certainly a step too far, but we do need to insure that all drinking is responsible.
Younger/older teens are already all too willing to throw their life away and someone elses because they don't have enough perspective on life. Don't know how else to put it. But most of us already know its true.
I would be in favor of more (appropriate) restrictions on drinking, not less.
Why keep trying to make the drivers license more than it should be? Why not have, in addition to a drivers license, a drinking license. You could require a written and practical exam and further require that the drinking license be presented to purchase any alcohol.
sam, learn to read.
Ive always thought it made more sense to allow 18+ to buy beer from liquor stores / gas stations, but not to allow people to drink at bars until they are 21.
When you buy from a gas station, you can drive home, drink, and pass out. When you drink at a bar, it's more likely you'll drive afterwards.
Leaving aside the inanity of the current drinking age from a practical perspective, how is it Constitutional? I don't see how the states get off treating 18 years olds as adults in everything but this. An 18 year old (heck, 14 year olds too) can be charged as an adult for murder because he could appreciate the consequences of his actions, but he can't when it comes to alcohol?
Any Contitutional law experts care to fill me in on the disparity?
Any Contitutional law experts care to fill me in on the disparity?
Perhaps it would help if you identified the constitutional provision which is violated. There's no rule, after all, that laws have to fit in to a unitary, coherent theoretical framework.
There's no constitutional right to drink alcohol in an unrestricted fashion. In fact, there are no completely unfettered constitutional rights, period. All constitutional rights are tempered (balanced) against the state interest for restricting them in some fashion. (The usual example is that laws that make it illegal to shout "FIRE" in a crowded theatre, unless there's a fire, of course, are a legitimate exercise of the state's power to restrict freedom of speech.
That being said, it's the Feds who have forced the states to raise their drinking age to 21 under pain of losing federal funds.
Dropping the age to 18 wouldn't do too much good. It should be lowered to 15 or even eliminated (for drinking, not purchasing).
Most drunk driving is done by alcoholics who do it repeatedly. Most of the rest is done by people who have little experience with drinking. If people started drinking at 14, they would learn early what the effects of too much booze are - well before they learn to drive. In addition, if they are alcoholics, a condition that is mostly genetic, it will be revealed while they are still in a custodial situation. While a lot of parents would do nothing, most would take action.
I think it would also help if we nixed the taboo nature of booze. If it were not this marvelous forbidden fruit, young people wouldn't binge on it when they got the rare opportunity.
Once kids are done with their growth spurt, they should probably be given the occasional beer or wine with dinner.
I like the 21 drinking age, just like I like marijuana prohibition and absurdly low speed limits.
It incubates a contempt for government in our youth that makes me proud.
How about discount drinks for people who arrive on bicycle, foot, or public transit?
The recommendation for lowering the drinking age has to be understood as part of a broader strategy for demystifying and disenchanting alcohol in American culture. But that's a very big task. American culture has a heavy investment in icons of transgression, which are bound up with rites of passage. Massive consumption of mind-altering stimulants is one of those iconic transgressive behaviors. That mythic status of transgression locks American culture into a cycle of prohibition and rebellion that other cultures aren't necessarily so bound up in. France, for example, has I believe no drinking age, and much less binge drinking. But France has a very different culture of authority and transgression -- a lot more solidarity-based strikes and marches, a lot less "rebel without a cause" -- and American frat houses are not going to become mature, sociable French drinkers just by lowering the drinking age. It's not that culture can't change: America's middle-class food culture looks vastly more like French food culture today than it did 30 years ago, and obviously there's the amazing decline of smoking. But it takes a cultural consensus within at least part of the society on an alternative vision of behavior, an alternative model of what college should be like.
I would be in favor of raising the legal BAC to .10, but regardless of what the limit is, I think it's a problem that people who are drinking (any amount) and then driving don't know whether they are over the limit or not. How does one discover what .08 "feels like"?
Also, I agree with Will Allen that it's best to implement a tiered penalty system where if a driver is right around the limit the punishment is much lighter than if they're at, say, .15 and up.
vaildog writes: "For most people a DUI is a career killer, and imposes a burden beyond the severity of the crime committed."
Career killer? Try telling that to Dumbya and Cheney.
Eighteen seems fine to me.
The fact that you MIGHT have killed someone while DUI shouldn't give the state the right to punish you as if you had.
No, no, this is backwards. Driving drunk and (unluckily) killing someone is morally equivalent to driving drunk and (luckily) not killing anyone. In both cases, the driver is doing something reckless, dangerous and illegal. Bad luck does not make someone more morally culpable.
It's no defense that a drunk driver didn't happen to get into an accident, any more than it's a defense that a person recklessly firing a gun into a crowd of people didn't happen to hit anyone. In both cases, we should punish the action: recklessly endangering other people's lives.
I think the most trenchant point I've heard made in the debate so far, by a university president, is that it is impossible for universities to counsel students on responsible drinking when drinking itself is supposedly illegal. It's the same problem encountered with providing clean syringes to heroin users in countries where heroin use is criminal and possession of a syringe is admissible as evidence of the crime.
Cardinal Fang,
How come a teenage driver who kills a pedestrian while texting get probation, but someone who has a BAC of .08 and does the same thing gets multiple years in prison? I'm just arguing for a sense of proportionality.
vaildog: I think that if the level of risk of texting while driving can be demonstrated with the same certainty as the alcohol-driving risk has been, and if campaigns against texting while driving can be made ubiquitous enough, the penalties for texting while driving will start to come up closer to those for drinking and driving.
It's no defense that a drunk driver didn't happen to get into an accident, any more than it's a defense that a person recklessly firing a gun into a crowd of people didn't happen to hit anyone. In both cases, we should punish the action: recklessly endangering other people's lives.
It's not an absolute defense, but it's surely a strongly mitigating factor. We punish murder more harshly than attempted murder, and both (typicallY) more harshly than manslaughter. Intent and outcome are relevant factors.
@Cardinal Fang, SG
You're arguing largely from two different schools of modern ethics. Cardinal is making the deontic point that acting with reckless disregard for human life (by driving drunk) is the wrong part, and should be punished because it is wrong in and of itself, regardless of the actual consequences.
SG is coming from the consequentialist perspective here, in arguing that the end results of what happens are the important part, and not hitting someone is demonstrably less bad than hitting someone.
I tend towards the deontic position (wrong in and of itself), but with a caveat regarding evidence. When you are pulled over you may or may not have been acting in such a way as to actually be recklessly disregarding human life. When you hit someone, you demonstrably were acting in such a way.
That is, I think that if you do hit someone we should punish you more severely because we know beyond reasonable doubt that you acted with reckless disregard for human life. When you blow a .09, you might or might not have been, and we would do well to err on the side of a more moderate punishment.
Will Allen, I can read. Please let me know where I'm wrong in your assessment that stricter punishments combined with highter blood alcohol limits will solve the problem. I'm suggesting it will cause more accidents, and even if things stay the same, throwing the book at someone whoe already does stupid things because they lack real pespective/focus on life when it comes to prevention. A person who gets hammered is less likely to get hammered simply because it may ruin their life if they get in a car crash. They're already getting hammered-- an activity that can easily ruin their life for a variety of other reasons regardless of whether or not they drive.
It's like saying let's make gun penalty's stiffer. The people who violate the law aren't doing so because the punishment is already lax.
Just to play devil's advocate. Why not raise the age of responsibility to 21 for enlistment and voting? While we're at it we could require an extra 3 years of High School as well.
Utterly unworkable. Though people who drive often forget it, there ARE other forms of identification other than drivers licenses. So unless you're going to restrict the ability to drive to people with drivers licenses (obviously unconstitutional), you can easily get around this by using a passport, other form of ID, etc.
I once worked in a liquor store, and can assure you most people don't have that 2nd form of ID. I had the following experience many times:
I watch a customer drive into the parking lot and enter the store. They arrive at the counter with their purchase. I ask for ID. They don't have one. I say something along the lines of "But you DROVE here". They look at me blankly. Strangely enough, none of these individuals produced a passport.
Cardinal Fang,
You might have a point if I really believed that drunk driving was reckless. But I don't. Part of this is because I'm not really sure what drunk driving is. I have no idea how many drinks over what period of time for my body weight puts me at a certain BAC level. Each chart I have seen is different from the previous one.
Back when I did criminal defense work, I represented drunk drivers. Of those who were stopped for weaving slightly outside of their lane of traffic, the average BAC was .16. I NEVER had a client who was stopped for weaving with less than a .13. The highest BAC I saw was a .25, a big guy who had spent the day slaughtering hogs on his brother's farm and drinking beer while doing so.
And you can't go by the statistics which are gathered and published. In order to make the problem worse than it is, if anyone involved in a traffic accident tests positive for alcohol, it is counted as an alcohol-related accident. That means, for instance, that if a person with a .10 BAC is stopped at a light and someone hits him from behind, it is counted as an alcohol-related accident.
Now, I don't want to minimize the horror of the relatively few fatal accidents that are truly the result of drunk driving, but exaggerating the rate of drunk driving and passing ridiculously low BAC limits does not address the problem in a way that contributes to respect for the law.
So as long as I can drive home safely, obeying all the traffic laws and not weaving outside my lane, I'll continue to drive after having a few drinks.
In most Canadian provinces there is graduated driver's licensing, the longest stage before a full license ranges from 18 months to 2 years and includes the ZT proviso. Melds well with the lower drinking age we have.
It should be noted that border towns already notice a phenomenon of youth traveling to drink, and so if one state goes the rest should follow shortly thereafter. Otherwise people can look forward to people blaming other states for getting their kids drunk.
Higher taxes on alcohol, with the intent to lower irresponsible drinking by young adults, strikes me as naive. Most teenagers and college kids who participate in such drinking have little to no expenses and are spending their parents' money on the booze they consume.
Higher prices equals "Dad, I need more money."
Oh yeah, higher prices means more expensive booze for the rest of us responsible drinkers, and more money in the hands of politicians to squander. No thanks!
"It's appalling that someone can go get killed in Iraq, but not buy a beer."
This is our holding area for the destitute and the abusers... here is the cell for those who do not care... here is the cell for the people who drink...wait a minute I am not drunk...and I don't care...guard switch these two and give this one a drink. Getting killed in a war, I do not believe would be helped by having been on a binge at least once in your life. I don't believe the two are closely enough related to be comparable, take that with a grain of salt considering I have never been killed in Iraq but I have bought a beer.
Also, the issue of "what should the drinking age be?" is separate from "should people be able to drive drunk?"
If our system of deterring drunk drivers is deficient, then fix it. Denying young adults the right to drink and saying "Presto! Less drunk driving!" is not a result, just a law.
Lets stop this "18 year olds shouldn't be able to drink because they'll drive drunk" foolishness. 18 year olds still drink, regardless of what the law says; the questions are: (1) should adults be able to drink alcohol? (2) what are the appropriate punishments for drunk driving? They're separate questions.
Mark wrote: It should be noted that border towns already notice a phenomenon of youth traveling to drink, and so if one state goes the rest should follow shortly thereafter. Otherwise people can look forward to people blaming other states for getting their kids drunk.
This is a "back to the future." I grew up in Wisconsin not far from Illinois. In the early 80s, Wisconsin's drinking age was 19 (it had been 18, then raised to 19, finally 21). Teenagers from Illinois went to Wisconsin to drink. Similar things happen in dry counties.
GU wrote: Higher prices equals "Dad, I need more money."
Ah yes, the old "all college kids are spoiled brats living on Dad's checkbook and therefore don't need to worry about prices" canard. Look, if college kids weren't price sensitive, campus bars wouldn't advertise drink specials, now would they?
There are many reasons for the binge drinking on college campuses---demand among that age group, obviously---but one of the big ones is the fact that colleges don't discipline students anymore, in no small part because they're worried about growing endowments and also because education has very much become a customer service job as the price has gone up and support from the state gone down. I have encountered this as an educator with regards to academic dishonesty issues, e.g., plagiarism and cheating. It's become an inquest to get anything done about fairly obvious cases of cheating. After the first time before the discipline committee we learn to figure out how to give Mr. Cheater a D. (Generally not an F, that means he'll be repeating the course and you definitely don't want him back!)
Ah, the fake driver's license. If you really want to know the truth, when they quit making the paper license so you could move the numbers around that is when the country lost it's innocence. I read once about Russia that 'nothing was permitted;' so if you were out on the streets it was obviously by the grace of the state. We have in this country something of the same idea around pleasurable activities. Maybe that was what John Lennon was thinking when he wrote 'Back in the USSR.' As Oscar Wilde pointed out, 'Work is the curse of the drinking class,' and really the problem is to remove the motor vehicle which is mostly about work from drinking. If you must mix the two, put a $70 breathalyzer in your glove box.
Please, no more alcohol taxes. Teenagers can ALREADY afford more alcohol than I can, and I don't even have kids yet.
Personally, I think this entire debate get totally screwed up by what the official version of "driving drunk" is. .08 is ridiculously low and I think most people can probably drive safely at that level (and up to maybe around .15 or so, depending on the person).
The real problem isn't with "drunk" driving -- it's with people getting so entirely shitfaced that they loose all control and start acting like idiots. Those are the people who end up killing somebody, not the those down in the lower BAC levels.
Both ideas--ZT for alcohol content for any driver under 21, and marking it on licenses so you can't buy alcohol in a store or bar using the license for ID--are great.
I disagree with Briar above about safe alcohol limits, based on Mythbusters' research. (I don't drink heavily enough to argue from personal experience about how non-shitfaced I am.) Several times they were testing theories about things comparative to drunk driving, which meant they had to drink to just under the legal limit and then drive. (They wouldn't be allowed on the course if over the legal limit.) And they were strikingly bad. This from a group of regular drinkers.
A car is a frequent choice of murder weapon. If we were going to argue whether someone was too impaired to bicycle home, or rollerblade home, it'd be one thing. Arguing that they are going to do something as complex as driving (there's a reason you can bike at 5, but not drive a car) in something as dangerous as a car--I'd like 'em sober.
Crimfan,
With my "higher taxes will have little effect on young people's alcohol consumption patterns" comment, I was not implying that all kids are spoiled brats, but many are. I was also implying that, since most young people have essentially zero expenses, even if they work for their money, raising the price of six pack a couple bucks won't make much of a difference to the young adult. And lets be clear, most of these drinking age activists are middle-to-upper-middle-class folks worried about their little darlings drinking too much at college--in other words, scared parents. They could care less about some poor kid getting drunk.
In my opinion, the most sensible way to address the problem of drinking in college is to raise the legal drinking age on campus to 25. Then initiate a zero tolerance rule. Anyone caught on campus with any booze in their system is expelled. Period.
In high school 18 is too low because there are still 18 year olds in high school. By the same token 21 is too low because there are still 21 year old students in college. If the age is set at 25 most students have graduated by that time. Students over the age of 25 are considered non-traditional students and would not come under that restriction.
Insurance companies recognize age 25 as a milestone since it is the age when car insurance premiums drop significantly. They point to the dramatic drop in accident rates by people older than 25 as justification.
"It's appalling that someone can go get killed in Iraq, but not buy a beer."
This is an amazingly stupid argument, Megan. Are you also going to inveigh against the injustice that one may die in the service of one's country in the military at the tender age of 18 but cannot serve that same country in the House of Representatives until one is 25? Even more unfairly, one cannot serve that country in the Senate until age 30. The ultimate indignity is that our 18 year old servicemen must wait until the ripe old age of 35 before they are allowed to serve their country as president. Surely if someone is old enough to go get killed in Iraq then they must be old enough to be collect Social Security!
The military will take high-school dropouts, gang members, and even some people with criminal records. Does that sound like there is a high requirement for maturity and sound judgment? The minimal requirement for being in the military is barely more than having a pulse and a minimal level of physical fitness. On the other hand, before we allow people to drink (or in olden days, vote) we want them to have gained some wisdom through life experience and also have reached full physical maturity because during adolescence the parts of the brain that control judgment and inhibition have not fully developed.
Setting the legal drinking age at 21 has created a host of nightmares beyond the spike in binge drinking.
State and local governments have passed a raft of liquor laws that prohibit parents from giving alcohol to their children and from giving access to their home where alcohol is stored to anyone under 21.
As a result, police target homes where multiple cars are parked in order to determine if lawbreaking is occurring, and have created a new wave of illegal search and seizure abuses. They target cars with occupants who may be under 21, and have induced more police chases and, in all liklihood, fatalities, for reasons having nothing to do with alcohol laws.
The reasoning behind these laws may sound noble to a 60 year old. In fact, they have increased government power, and abuses of power, in a way that is morally indefensible and harmful to society.
This movement has had legs for much longer than just recently. On NPR the other day was a story that leads on their web site "John McCardell, the former president of Middlebury College in Vermont, says his group, the Amethyst Initiative, is against intoxication but supports responsible, adult behavior toward alcohol".
Raising the drinking age to 21 reduces DUI's in the 18 to 21 age group - WOW big surprise. Outlawing drinking for any age group will reduce DUI's among that group.
The real question is why pick on or restrict the rights of the under 21 age group. Why should they be subject to greater governmental paternalism than adults over 21?
I have some experience with some college age adults. To a person they could stand up and recite the "alcohol awareness" lectures they have been subject to since elementary school to the last detail. Whatever it is we have been doing to "stop" underage drinking, it is not working, and the answer is not more of the same.
I'd lower the drinking age to 16, as in Europe, but require licenses to show that you haven't had a DUI.
This would also be a more effective deterrent than the current tactic of suspending licenses for DUI, incidentally, since what happens right now is that a lot of chronic drunks get on the road without one. Let them drive to work--but make it damned difficult for people who drink and drive to get their hands on alcohol.
This is a woefully terrible idea. You highlight exactly why it's a terrible idea with the license suspension policy. Do you think that people of drinking age will be thwarted in their quest for alcohol by some words on their license? Remember prohibition? If people are willing to get drunk and drive with a suspended license (or actually without the license), I'm sure they'll find a way to get their booze under your scenario. Even if this policy was accurately executed, it would take an extreme amount of "police" work on the part of our bar, restaraunt, and liquor store workers to keep drinks out of the hands of these adults.
Let's also understand one important concept: DUI is probably not an age-specific issue. I'm not sure of the statistics, but I'd wager there is no linear correlation between age and DUI convictions with a negative slope (that is, more frequent convictions the younger the driver).
The CDC cites studies showing that drunk-driving crashes (and specifically fatalities) are correlated with younger drivers. In fact, younger drivers (16-20) and older drivers (over 70) are both more likely to cause a fatal car crash then other age groups, regardless of blood-alcohol content. So the issue is that drivers aged 16-20 are more likely to cause serious accidents.
The proper response to both the drinking age question and the DUI issue would be to lower the alcohol drinking age requirement and increase the minimum driving age requirement. This would have the effect of taking more car keys out of the hands of poor young drivers. Maybe 18 should be our gold standard for adulthood; it the becomes the age when you can drink, vote, drive a car, fight in a war, be a porn star, etc... (I actually think today's 18 year olds are more like the last generation's 16 year olds, so we should be raising the ages for everything and not lowering them for anything).
Tax my income, let me drink --simple as. The absurdity of charging and convicting a person as an adult for underage drinking speaks for itself.
With rights come responsibility. There is no reason to get behind a wheel if you've had a couple, and until it starts costing people their jobs, reputations and liberties in a profound and lasting way, then on it'll go --and just spare a moment's hope every day that it doesn't touch your life in the meantime.
Ergo, DUI: .05 BAL the legal limit; felony offense for first-timers, mandatory minimum 90 days in county jail.
Next stop: state penitentiary, and to the tune of at least two years. Cause damage or injury in either case, and it's on a legal par with committing a violent crime.
I've seen drunk driving wipe out a family. It's not just the deaths alone, but all of the BS afterwards, fighting over inheritances and whatnot, and it's still going on seven years after the fact.
Seriously, if I were running things, DUI offenders would be shot. They're not worthy of the liberty that I cherish and are too stupid and self-absorbed to breathe the same air as I.
Prohibition doesn't work, for anything. Control and taxation works great. How about a progressive tax on alcohol that goes down as your age goes up? I also like the special drivers licenses that specifically say not to sell this person alcohol if they have been convicted of DUI.
I say, lower the drinking age to 18, at which point 18 year olds can buy alcohol at bars or restaurants. In other words, they can only buy open containers. They could not buy alcohol from convenient or liquor stores. This would also defend against the claim that 18 year olds would buy alcohol for their younger high school counterparts since the 18 year olds cannot buy closed container alcohols.
The college bars and restaurants would love this too.
I'm not sure what you mean when you say to lower the drinking age to 16, "as in Europe." Europe is a continent comprised of many different countries with their own sets of laws, not a single country with unity of law. Only a handful of European countries have a drinking age (not a purchase age) of 16. And even at that, most of those countries put caveats on the law such as no spirits until age 18.
That said, I think it absurd that the drinking age in the states is 21. At 18 you are a legal adult. As you point out, you can go to war and die for your country but you can't have a beer. I'll add to that the fact that you can get married but you can't toast with champagne at your wedding. Imagine being 20 years old, married with a child or two. You and your wife are responsible, work full time and raise you kids to the best of your abilities. But when you go out to dinner you can't have a drink.
Of course raising the drinking age to 21 lowered alcohol related deaths. But raising it to 25 will lower it further. So what's the argument against making it 25, or 30, or 35? 21 is an arbitrary number. Pick an age at which adulthood starts according to the law and that's it. Full stop.
The real problem with regard to alcohol is the puritanical attitude most people have about drinking. If young people are raised with exposure to alcohol, seeing their parents have a drink with dinner regularly and even sometimes having a drink of their own with dinner then alcohol loses its mystery and taboo qualities by the time the young person is 16 or 17 and he likely won't be very interested in binge drinking.
A simpler solution (and one that forces the issue I think): raise the driving age to 21, the age at which you can join the military to 21 and the right to vote to 21. That would be consistent, right?
A simpler solution (and one that forces the issue I think): raise the driving age to 21, the age at which you can join the military to 21 and the right to vote to 21. That would be consistent, right?
"Europe does it" and so should we? Egads.
Has is occurred to you that Americans are less well behaved than the Europeans and so we need more draconian rules? (For instance, we are dumber, fatter, and more crime-prone).
Europe has a minimum drinking age of 16. What are Europe's alcoholism and drunk driving rates?
Are they lower than America's? I would think that they are and that that is why they can afford to have the drinking age set at 16.
Whatever America's alcoholism and drunk driving rates are among youth, they are going to go up if you lower the drinking age.
SORRY, I DON'T BUY ANY OF THESE SO-CALLED COMPROMISES TO LOWERING THE DRINKING AGE. IT SHOULD BE LOWERED, PERIOD, WITHOUT ANY ADDENDUMS. IT WAS RAISED BECAUSE OUR POLITICIANS GAVE INTO HYSTERICAL GROUPS LIKE MADD, WHO WANT PROHIBITION BACK. IF THIS ALL COMES DOWN TO A CASE OF RESPONSIBILITY, AND OPPONENTS ARE ARGUINIG 18 YEAR OLDS AREN'T ADULT ENOUGH TO HANDLE THE RESPONSIBILITY OF A BEER, THEN i SAY FINE. JUST MAKE SURE YOU CHANGE EVERY OTHER LAW PERTAINING TO "ADULTHOOD" (SUCH AS GOING TO WAR BEING TRIED AS AN ADULT FOR A CRIME, VOTING, GETTING MARRIED, ETC) TO 21 YEARS OLD AS WELL
Best approach: lower the drinking age to 18, but also raise the driving age to 18: simple.
Every indicators shows that among our youth, especially college students, the switch is from a variety of unfamiliar and esoteric drugs to the drug commonly found in the most respectable and law abiding homes. In this society we use alcohol for a variety of reasons; to be sociable, to be accepted, to relax, to gain courage, to improve self-esteem, and yes, to add romance to our lives. And, too often, for many of us alcohol is used to escape from depression, fears, anxiety, and other inadequacies real or imagined. It is for these and other reasons the abuse of alcohol is on the rise.
According to the federal National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, college drinking contributes to about 1,700 student deaths, 599,000 injuries and 97,000 cases of sexual assault or date rape annually.
"Defying one law makes it easier for youths to justify defying another, perhaps with more serious consequences
Hey, Megan the Libertarian, I think you missed the obvious answer on this one. If the problem is driving and drinking, give the kids a choice. When they turn legal driving age, they can choose between drinking and driving. Give up the right to get a licence, and you get to buy booze. But if you get a driver's licence, no booze until age 21. If you are found drinking, whether driving or not, you lose the licence, and don't get it back until age 21. I think this will take care of the problem of drinking and driving. We will have kids who drink and don't drive (a few) and a lot of kids who drive, scared absolutely witless that they might lose their licence, and so they will not drink. Incentives work, and you can always induce rational choice by inventing and imposing the right constraints.
If we really want to penalize kids who drive drunk, shut down the text messaging function on their cellphones. For kids these days, that's instant no social life.