alcohol is a great, if not the greatest of darwinian tools, everyone should be allowed to drink it.
Poll: Should The US Drinking Age Be Lowered?
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I think you fail to see the point that those arguing for the lowering of the drinking age are trying to make. By making alcohol legal at a lower age and providing proper education you create a culture of responsibility, rather than saying "no, you can't have this", while holding a beer in one hand and mainlining PCP with the other.skcseth said:
And also, there's a group called Mothers Against Drink Driving? What an exercise in fucking redundancy.
The problem with polls is that there is no way to tell if those answering it were telling the truth. There is also the fact that it does not say how many people were in each age group and that can also skew the results. Top that off with the fact that 10 different specialists can take the same data set and come to completely different conclusions and make pretty graphs for each and I'd be inclined to call this bunk.gentleben said:I found this data on US drink driving as well through a Gallup Organisation poll.
I would also raise the point that several US states have a ludicrously high BAC at 0.08%.
As far as the poll, I think 21 is acceptable in that the lawmakers are counting on a certain amount of underage drinking, a sort of trickle-down effect. If you can buy booze at 21 you can supply it to younger friends, most 21 year olds will hang out with people within 4 years of their age making it most likely that they will be providing booze to very few people under 18. Now, if you lower the age to puchase booze to 18 you see a lot more alcohol being supplied to 14 year olds and that is not a good thing at all.
In closing I would however like to point out the following: The drinking age will not be lowered in the US because of insurance company lobbyists. Insurance companies have the most to gain from keeping the drinking age high, or rather they will have less to pay out on accidents by keeping it high and if they had their way the driving age would be raised as well.
But even with proper education, kids will still be irresponsible. They'll all just have easier access to alcohol to fuel their nights of binge drinking.gentleben said:
Look at sex education in schools. It still seems to be a taboo subject (at least during the time I was in school). It's just a course consisting of a few "shock" videos with a lecture and a few free condoms and they just kick you out the door, assuming you know everything (sad, I know). I think schools would run an alcohol education course the exact same way. Even if the classes were properly taught, it would more than likely go in one ear and out the other with these kids.
I work in a club here and all I hear every night from adults, and kids posing as adults with fake I.D.'s, is how much they are all looking forward to, and I quote, "getting wasted". These kids want to get so drunk, that they can't even stand up or formulate even a quarter of a sentence.
I can see the point those who are for lowering the drinking age are trying to make, but it will fail in the long run. If you do raise the drinking age however, make sure schools aren't just using the alcohol education classes as a filler for homerooms, and raise taxes for those who are buying who are under 21, to limit the amount they can have. Or at least try to anyway.
Sure, it's your country not mine. But think it through first. How many alcohol related incidents are there between the age of 12 and 21? What will happen if suddenly the limit is lowered? Will that number increase, or increase dramatically?
Is your general youth responsible enough to regulate their alcohol intake, and are your general parents intelligent enough to properly educate their children about the dangers of alcohol?
I'd say no, but that would be an uneducated guess.
Is your general youth responsible enough to regulate their alcohol intake, and are your general parents intelligent enough to properly educate their children about the dangers of alcohol?
I'd say no, but that would be an uneducated guess.
america has enough problems as it is ... no real offense meant just an observation but u dont need all those extra people gettin drunk as it is
There are an awful lot of irresponsible people between the ages of 18 and 21.
However, I think that's a symptom of our society's prolonging of maturity. In the old days, "kids" around age 12-15 had full-time jobs and even families of their own. I'm sure they were still more likely to do stupid shit than older people, but they still managed to get by as full fledged adults.
Now we prolong adulthood until 18-21. It's no wonder so many of them act crazy. As the old saying goes, idle hands are the devils workshop. The answer is to allow, or even require, them to take on more responsibility. Postponing adulthood even LONGER is the exact opposite of what we should be doing.
However, I think that's a symptom of our society's prolonging of maturity. In the old days, "kids" around age 12-15 had full-time jobs and even families of their own. I'm sure they were still more likely to do stupid shit than older people, but they still managed to get by as full fledged adults.
Now we prolong adulthood until 18-21. It's no wonder so many of them act crazy. As the old saying goes, idle hands are the devils workshop. The answer is to allow, or even require, them to take on more responsibility. Postponing adulthood even LONGER is the exact opposite of what we should be doing.
Are you saying that the people of America are that incapable of rational thought and basic responsibility that they can't handle something that is accepted in every other developed nation on earth?skcseth said:
And I don't know about sex education, but we started in grade 6 at my primary school, and did like 4 classes in a year, then another 4 in grade 7, then similar numbers in grades 8, 9 and 10 at high school.
I do think the American drinking age should be lowered. Down to 18 years old as that seems to be the standard worldwide. However I do think that bartenders should be forced to take the car keys off of anybody they deem inebriated. That way it'll lower the Drunk driving rate a little. However I don't know what the punishment for underage drinking is. If it isn't very serious then I think that the age can stay at 21. It is only if it has major consequences should it be lowered (I don't believe an 18 year old drinker should get anything except being thrown out of the bar. Unless he/she is very drunk then he/she should be placed in jail for the night).
Yep. I wouldn't put it that harshly, but yep. People everywhere, even in these developed nations, tend to do things in excess. For Americans (mostly; and I'm sure this goes for the English/Canadians/who ever else), it just happens to be alcohol.gentleben said:
Actually, for people, alcohol tends to be something that gets over done and consumed irresponsibly.
I feel that if someone is 18 and is in the military they should have the right to legally drink where as someone who is 18 and not in the military should have to wait until they are 21.
If you are old enough to be in the military you should have the right to drink.
If you are old enough to be in the military you should have the right to drink.
1) yes, and I am an American. The problem isn't that most people won't respond well to education and act responsible, it's that everything here has to be broken down to the lowest common denominator. Our lawmakers are of the opinion that if it won't work for everyone then it won't work at all. See also: no child left behind. We have to dumb everything down so the dumb people are not left out.gentleben said:
2) The same applies to sex ed. We had a 2 week class in 5th and 6th grade and a chapter in "Health" class went over sex ed in 9th grade. That was about it. Not only that, it pushed abstinence and barely touched on safe sex practices. Come to think of it that's pretty much how the DARE program works too. "Kids, don't do drugs, mmmmkay?"
Yes, but it should be on like a ten-year timer. As if,the government said, "in ten years, there will be no drinking limit". And with that we could maybe hope that we'd lose the nubile fervor to drink underage. But, I'm a philosopher, not sociologist.