College Presidents asking for a lowered drinking age.

[mredskins]

Originally Posted by EternalEnigma21

Not disagreeing with military being a constructive choice, but anyone in the military knows recruiters tend to stretch the truth. My grandfather was a recruiter and he said they would flat out lie all the time. I come from a strong military family background, and think there are great opportunities there, but these guys can get predatorial on dumb kids.

HBO had a excellant Doc on this about a month ago. It open my eyes to kids in a one stop light towns that have this choice Taco Bell cashier or the military for their future careers. If you have any pride you probably goign to end up in the middle east.

Here is a link I strongly suggest everyone watch it, this is the frontline that fills the frontline in the middle east:

HBO Documentaries: Documentary Films Series

[GhettoDogAllStars]

Yeah, I've seen a recruiting documentary where the recruiters would stop a kid and and talk to them about enlisting. The kids wouldn't be interested, but the recruiters would trick them into giving up some of their information (i.e.: phone, address, etc.), and the recruiters would put them on the list as if they were interested in enlisting. It seems like it is a very unethical job.

[JLW428]

Originally Posted by Riggo44

I can remember steeling beer from my Dad when I was 14. In my opinion if you’re old enough to be held accountable as an adult in the eyes of the law you should be old enough to drink.

That's the way I see it exactly. You can die for your country at the age of 18, you get tried as an adult in court, one should be able to consume alchohol.

[EternalEnigma21]

What would be an advantage of lowering the drinking age?

[Daseal]

Read the article, EE21. College professors say the later drinking age encourages binge drinking, puts students in situations trying to hide alcohol that are typically much more dangerous than a bar/etc, and basically they say you're an adult in every sense of the word. If you do something stupid with alcohol, you're responsible. America has a very high percentage of alcoholism and we have some of the more extreme alcohol laws in the world. (DUIs are much more crippling in many European countries -- part of that comes from great mass transit I would guess) and with our rate of alcoholism, why not change? Yes, more kids between 18-21 will die from alcohol related things -- but there will also be a steep drop-off in deaths from 21-25ish.

[EternalEnigma21]

I still don't get the logic behind the statements... that somehow being "exposed" to alcohol earlier will make them more responsible? wtf? I just don't get the logic. Binge drinking may go down at the college level (i doubt it, though) with the lowering of the age limit based on the fact that the people who are likely to wrecklessly abuse alcohol will drink enough to derail their lives before college, keeping them out of schools entirely...

The reason all the binge drinking and general debauchery goes on in college, is that its many young peoples first taste of freedom, and liberty from parental rules... It really has nothing to do with the legality of alcohol. If the only consequence of lowering the age were that less college age kids would be breaking the law, I'd be all for it...but alcohol is already pretty prominent in high schools, where kids are bad enough drivers, impressionable, and irresponsible. Why make that problem worse? And it would. I guarantee we'd see a spike in dropout rates, teen pregnancies, alcohol related fatalities, etc... among high school kids.

Maybe that's the angle? Either way the negatives far outweigh the positives. When I was 18 or even closer to 21 I would've argued all day long for lowering the age, but not now.

[MTK]

Because it's at 21 I think there's a good portion of kids that have little to no exposure to alcohol UNTIL they get to college. And let's face it college isn't the best place to get your first exposure to alcohol. If your first real exposure to drinking involves doing keg stands and beer bongs, that's probably not a great idea.

Honestly I don't know what the answer is, but it's clear that the 21 age limit really isn't doing anything to deter drinking so why not try a different direction?

[BleedBurgundy]

Having lived in Europe for 6 years, I feel somewhat educated on this subject. In each of the countries that I lived or spent a good deal of time in (Iceland, Germany, U.K. and Italy) there was no enforced drinking age. Friends of mine who were brought up in this environment still liked to drink, but there wasn't the insanity that my fellow servicemembers and I would display, oh, every single night. Drinking alcohol does not have all of the connotations that it does here, so there's no real "rebellion" involved in the act of drinking. The people I knew had been drinking for a number of years by the time I knew them (18-20 yrs old) and they handled their alcohol with a maturity that would be uncommon for the average American twenty something.

[jsarno]

Originally Posted by Daseal

College presidents seek debate on drinking age - Yahoo! News

Pretty interesting. Have to say I agree. You're either an adult at 18 or you aren't. There really aren't many lives saved by the 21 drinking age, the amount of deaths is just delayed by three years. Most people are either responsible when it comes to driving or stupid. Just how it is.

For those of you too lazy to read the article, they basically say that it encourages binge drinking. Interesting debate, I want to see what happens with this. It's not secret that I am a huge opponent to MADD. The idea I support fully, but there's a reason the founder left the organization and say that they've lost their direction.

You aren't.

There is no doubt in my mind that as soon as those 18 year olds hit college they will be drinking...hell they already are, but it's MUCH, MUCH harder. If you loosen that law, the kids will have nothing stopping them from getting drunk at all. They just "left the nest" and will do much worse.
I know the argument is that they are already drinking, and it's true, but there are plenty of people that would love to throw a party but don't due to age restrictions and fewer people are selling to younsters (or buying for youngsters) due to the stiff penalties. Take those away and those 18-20 year olds will abuse it.
Most people that are FOR dropping the drinking age to 18 are people that are under 27.

[jsarno]

Originally Posted by Mattyk72

Because it's at 21 I think there's a good portion of kids that have little to no exposure to alcohol UNTIL they get to college. And let's face it college isn't the best place to get your first exposure to alcohol. If your first real exposure to drinking involves doing keg stands and beer bongs, that's probably not a great idea.

Honestly I don't know what the answer is, but it's clear that the 21 age limit really isn't doing anything to deter drinking so why not try a different direction?

Yes it is detering people from drinking, and a lot of them, but there are still a lot that are undetered.

You're saying there is a problem, and to solve that problem, let's make the laws looser?

If we would ever change the law, it should go up, or go away completely. I would support either of those options.

(if we allowed it to go away completely, it would take a generation to get to where people are responsible like other countries with no drinking age, so we have to be willing to go through those growing pains.)

I personally wouldn't even care if we did another prohibition, but I know that would not be received well and would cause more problems than it creates, but alcohol and alcoholism is a bigger problem in this country than gun control and other issues that people are worried about, maybe our attention needs to be more focused on real issues like this?

[EternalEnigma21]

Originally Posted by BleedBurgundy

Having lived in Europe for 6 years, I feel somewhat educated on this subject. In each of the countries that I lived or spent a good deal of time in (Iceland, Germany, U.K. and Italy) there was no enforced drinking age. Friends of mine who were brought up in this environment still liked to drink, but there wasn't the insanity that my fellow servicemembers and I would display, oh, every single night. Drinking alcohol does not have all of the connotations that it does here, so there's no real "rebellion" involved in the act of drinking. The people I knew had been drinking for a number of years by the time I knew them (18-20 yrs old) and they handled their alcohol with a maturity that would be uncommon for the average American twenty something.

I agree with the mindset there, wholeheartedly... but we have a completely different culture. Lowering the drinking age to 18 certainly won't evolve us into a culture that looks at drinking casually as young adults.

Recently there were some parents who made the news being prosecuted for having 'alcohol parties' at their house for underage kids. The kids were there with their parents' permission and had their consent to drink at their house. The parents had the sense to make sure that no one drove, and shuttled the kids home safely after the party, if they weren't staying the night. In my opinion these parents were teaching their kids and others responsibility. Plan to have fun, and plan to have safe fun... and of course they were prosecuted for it.

The complete separation of a "good time" and sensibility is the problem in our culture. Its far from an alcohol problem, and anyone who's ever seen "girls gone wild" can certainly attest to that. Kids being kids is one thing, but alcohol and drug fueled orgies, car-hopping, and the multitude of "jackass" stunts on youtube are proof of that.

I don't think ive ever used more quotation marks in a post before.

[BigSKINBauer]

Mote of Maryland signed that. Its a good thing. I"m not just saying that because i'm 20. It makes no sense. It doesn't promote responsible drinking. Freshmen hide in dorm rooms drinking huge amounts of alcohol. Let them go out and go to the bar and have a few drinks. Obviously the current age doens't stop me or my friends from drinking. I never 'really' drank till i was 18 anyways. I'm going to be well past 21 by the time the rule changes so my view is still unbiased. Dumb rule.

[jsarno]

Originally Posted by BigSKINBauer

Mote of Maryland signed that. Its a good thing. I"m not just saying that because i'm 20. It makes no sense. It doesn't promote responsible drinking. Freshmen hide in dorm rooms drinking huge amounts of alcohol. Let them go out and go to the bar and have a few drinks. Obviously the current age doens't stop me or my friends from drinking. I never 'really' drank till i was 18 anyways. I'm going to be well past 21 by the time the rule changes so my view is still unbiased. Dumb rule.

I saw a stat not too long ago, and I am scrambling to find it now...I'll find it eventually, but the stat was alarming on the age of DUI offenders. The majority are 21-27 years of age.
So while I could easily get on board with lowering the drinking age to 18 if they stayed inside, I would no way agree with them drinking in public. They have to drive home, and we all know an 18 year old more often than not will not make the best decisions.
If you want to see obnoxious teenagers drinking and doing dumb things, tune into MTV during spring break.

[Daseal]

jsarno -- if you look at the stats, it used to be 18-24. The drinking age just delayed people doing dumb things. Stupid people do stupid things, and the more you do something the more educated you get with it.

[EternalEnigma21]

Should 18 year olds be able to legally purchase handguns as well?