What does it matter? If you want to drink when you're 13, you'll find a way. I think it's a stupid law no matter what age.
All "substance" laws are stupid in my opinion. The government should not be able to control what a person puts in their body. Making driving laws tougher is fine, but substance laws are a joke.
It's 18 in Australia.....and we're not all a bunch of raving alcoholics. And you cannot have any alcohol in your blood while your driving (until you are at least 22), and past then you have to be under 0.05 BAC.
I think it works much better in England. The drinking age is 18. They don't have the problem with drunk driving like we do though. Lynus always told me you got your liscence revoked if you got caught DWI, something similar. They don't play around with it like we do. Some of you are from England. Is it really like that? I don't think 18 would work here with our driving age at 16 and our DWI laws. Also, I heard that if you're on an army base, the legal drinking age is 18. But, does that only apply if you're *in* the army and on base, or if you're just on the base? And then, can you be in the army and drink legally off base at 18? Any ideas? On a funnier note...my mom and my aunt are 3 years apart. When my aunt was 18, the drinking age was 21. When she turned 21 though, my mom turned 18 and that's the year they lowered the legal age to 18. So my aunt was pretty pissed about it. By the time my mom turned 21 though, the drinking age was 21 again. (they grew up in LaGrange, Texas (country) so they pretty much drank whenever they wanted, but still sucks, IMO).
I don't think you should be able to drink, drive, or fight for your country until you're 25 or have graduated from college.
You could apply that statement to any law proscribing anti-social behavior. I hardly think that's a reasonable approach to legislation-- "people are going to do it even if it's illegal, so what's the point?"
When it's mainly a victimless crime, I don't think it's unreasonable. I don't think I was much more mature when I was 21 than when I was 17. Hell, I'm probably no more mature now at 25. However, maybe I did go too far at 13, but I still don't think there should be a legal age for you to be able to drink-maybe to buy, but not to drink.
I'll go along with treeman and Pole. The better question is what should the dying age be. How many wars would there be if all the old f*rts like me were on the front lines?
That wasn't the case when I was in the army. But, maybe they've changed it. When I was 18, I thought the age should be 18. When I was 20, I thought the age should be 18. When I was 21, I thought it should be 21. Now, I'm glad it's 21, and I wish they would raise it for selfish reasons, maybe to 23. I'm very glad it isn't 18 though. I can't imagine how horrible a bar would be if it allowed 18 year olds in.
I'm 20 right now, only a little over 5 months until the big 2-1, and I think 21's probably the right age. I mean if you want booze, you can get booze no matter how old you are, but if it were legal to drink at 18, I imagine there would be a lot more drunken kids driving around. I hardly ever drink now, and I'm pretty sure when I turn 21, I'll still hardly ever drink...except to maybe loosen up after a long day...
We should have much, much tougher drinking and driving laws. We should raise the driving age under most circumstances to 18. Even then have driving exams 10 times more difficult (focus more on in traffic technique instead of paralell parking between 2 cones on a track) and driver training 20 times more difficult. We should lower the drinking age for beer/wine to 12 if an adult family memember is present, 16 otherwise. If moderate alcohol consumption was socialized with the family (like Europe) I think society as a whole would be better off. Take the bringe drinking, and driking and driving (because you have to sneak around to drink) out of American youths' rights of passage and I think we would save a lot of lives.
I agree with you completely Desert Scar. You should learn the consequences of over-drinking while you are in high school (while school is still easy) and well before you can drive a car. Add that to Australia's rule about zero tolerance for driving after drinking until age 22 or so, and I think we'd have it. The only problem is, we might increase the number of teen pregnancies...can we force everyone under 21 to be on mandatory oral contraceptives? Just for the record - if they had effective oral contraceptives for men, I'd be for that too.
Desert Scar, great post. I totally agree. Actually, in respone to BGM's post, I know a lot of people, like myself, who drank more in high school than they did in college. Even Lynus has said that once you turn 21, it's cool for a while, but what's the big deal? You've been drinking forever anyways, now you just can't get in trouble. So I don't know that lowering the age would be bad. In fact, it might be better. Kids like doing bad things
Wabush, Labrador. Just across the border from Fermont, Quebec. Yeah, you're right about Ottawa. Everyone hops across the border into Hull to party on the weekend.
So if you just have a job you can drive around recklessly? Come on now haven. I know you have more sense than that. Just for the record I have no opinion on the training if it should be 20 times more difficult as I don't know how it works for you to get the licence. In Norway you have to be 18 and pass a theory test, and a driving test. Think mine lasted around 30 mins, but it might be closer to an hour now. Before that you do however have to have mandatory hours of driving with the driving school, and usually you also have some driving with the school before the mandatory part comes up.
http://www.cnn.com/2002/HEALTH/parenting/02/26/teen.drinking.ap/index.html Guess the law isn't doing much good right now. Of course, anybody who's been under 21, lately, already knew this .
