A movement called the Amethyst Initiative has recruited over 100 college Presidents to urge the government to lower the drinking age from 21 to 18. Besides it being extremely difficult to enforce the drinking age on college campuses, or any place where large groups of young people are gathered together, it should be reduced even further, to 16, to allow parents and families to teach their young adults how to drink responsibly in the comfort of their own home. It would help reduce drunk driving as well, as teens who don’t have to sneakaround to drink can do so in the privacy of their own backyards and would be more likely to stay where they are, under the watchful eye of parents and neighbors close by. In many countries the drinking age is between 16 and 18, with only the nanniest of states requiring that young men and women who can join the military to die should do so without their first drink. Besides all that, the best way to get people to stop doing something is to make it perfectly legal. Did we learn nothing from prohibition? The forbidden is ALWAYS more fun!
My first drink was a wine cooller at 16 under the critical eye of my parents. At 18 my friends and I started having parties, but only when our parents were around (but out of site). At 21 we all went through a legal drinking stage in which we drank too much (but NEVER drove) because we’d had enough experience with ourselves drinking to know what we could and could not accomplish while drunk (unfortunately streaking didn’t make it on the Not To Do list; fortunately, that’s how I saw my husband’s ass a year before I’d even met him).
18 works well for most of Europe but it’s not so much the age but a nation’s attitude to booze that is the problem, Brits and Yanks have that in common at least.
I think the attitude comes from the way we are taught to use alcohol. In much of Europe, alcohol is meant to enhance the taste of certain foods, which is why it is accompanied by food in most instances and children learn to use it appropriately. In the US and the UK, alcohol is not paired well with food from a young age. People don’t know how to use wine and beer in food, and thus believe is is used soley for the purpose of getting drunk. If they were taught to appriciate its taste and culinary uses from a young age, th would be much better able to control their consumption.
You said, “It would help reduce drunk driving as well…” While I agree on many of your points about being old enough to die but can’t drink, etc., statistics certainly haven’t proven your statement true. It is well documented that in the decades since 1984, the incidents of drunk driving among those ages 18 to 21 fell over 50%. It seems a huge leap of faith to say lowering it down to 16 will make drunk driving incidents reduce unless as Dave said, we change our attitude. Maybe in the long run if people as young as 16 had access to alcohol, that attitude change would come but I think in the short term, we would have to be ready to accept an increase in fatalities (of both drunk and innocent) caused by drunk driving. I’m not sure many would be willing to accept this. The college professors certainly would because it makes their lives much easier.
We shouldn’t legislate something simply because people don’t know how to handle it properly. If the mone were spent on educating young people on how to use alcohol responsibly and how to prevent drunk driving that is spent on raiding high school and college parties, the incidents of drunk driving would reduce. The incidences of drunk driving going down could be attributed to more than raising the drinking age. Along with that legislation came a great deal of alcohol awareness education and the advent of the DARE programs, etc… We have to look at a variety of factors and keep in mind that raising the drinking age was just one factor. Lowering it and educating young adults about how to use alcohol responsibly would go a much longer way, as would people actually parenting their children rather than allowing the law to be their nanny. College campuses should not be responsibly for policing their student’s actions. They epople who go there are all at the age of consent, and if they can join the military, vote, and drive a car, they should be able to decide what to put into their body and when.
As long as America is the country where the car is king, drunk driving will continue unabated. Maybe they should lower it just in older cities where residential and retail properties share the same sidewalks. When you have to drive to a bar, you have to drive home.
How about we make the age 19, which keeps it out of the high schools, but covers most college students?