Many universities across the nation, including the Maryland System, have endorsed an opening up of discussion on the US drinking age. Does restricting the purchase of alcohol to persons over 21 really help prevent alcohol-related issues?
I certainly have no objections to having this kind discussion and think that honest research will reveal some very interesting results.
Personally, I believe that a lower drinking age will allow institutions of higher education like UMBC to better educate young adults in the responsible use of alcohol, rather than "clandestine binges." People who want to drink will, regardless of the law, so instead of trying unsuccessfully to stop the behavior let's educate students instead.
I'd love to hear some discussion from the UMBC community on this issue. Do you think the current law is good one? Should schools be punished for even wanting to question the current law? Will a lower age just push the current college alcohol issues into high school?
Ack! Drinking at 18?
Tuesday, September 9, 2008Posted by at 1:51 PM
Labels: special projects, steelwolf
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19 comments:
The alcohol issues are already at the high school level, I know when I graduated in 07 from my high school we had at least 6 alcohol related accidents associated with our high school students that year. I also knew PLENTY of people who went to parties and even had their parents host them.
If you look at the UMBC police blotter, there were a few underage drinking incidences. I'm not sure the policy of campus police but outside of campus if someone who is under 21 but older than 18 gets a citation for underage drinking, that is on their permanate record. That could affect them for the rest of their lives when finding a job, etc. Lowering the drinking age to 18 will allow people to make the decision to have a drink AS A LEGAL ADULT w/out having to ruin their lives.
We've all heard these before but if you are legal to get married, fight for your country in the armed forces, or just be considered a "legal adult" you are old enough to have a drink.
I think the law needs to be updated for what's actually going on in the world. Those who want to drink will find a way to drink, and those that don't want to drink will not drink.
On the other hand, by acknowledging that drinking will occur whether it's legal or not by changing the law to match reality, does that mean we'd be supporting the sense of self-entitlement and egotism that's spreading through our culture? That sense of 'I do want I want, and screw you for making rules that say otherwise!', you know?
I'd hate to think we were enabling that...but it's pointless to have a law that isn't enforced stringently enough to prevent underage drinking, right?
I personally believe that many universities are looking at this issue from a monetary view point as well. First of all, it costs money to enforce drinking policies and secondly, it allows the university to make money by becoming a vendor for alcoholic beverages. By making it legal, the current illegal drinking population would then be an additional source of income.
There should be no legal limitation on alcohol ingestion. It should be an education and family unit based ideal. Having a drinking limitation sets precedence for other governmental limitations that are less than constitutional, and that scares me. Always has.
Alcohol is proven to distort thoughts and actions. Bodies and brains of 18yr olds have not developed completely and can be seriously be damaged because of drinking. BUT, personally I think it should be a decision each person should make on his or her own. My roommate drinks, he sometimes has hang overs all the way up to 2 pm, he usually misses his 10 am class and once his 1 pm class. I mean it's his choice.
Age limit? There's nothing wrong with alcohol at any age. Just don't drive.
"if someone who is under 21 but older than 18 gets a citation for underage drinking, that is on their permanate record. " It does not stay on your record permanently... I've gotten arrested for marijuana and received citations for it also and i have a clean record.
i don't care if they lower the drinking age. here is how it'll work. the young dumbasses will drink to their heart's content either kill themselves from poisoning or car crash, or kill someone else. either way they'll be dead or in jail gettin boned by their cell mate.
it's just simple evolution people, let em drink, we can kill off the dumbasses, and america and return to its former glory
I agree completely with the last comment above. Those that are excited about the lowering of the drinking age will binge drink and kill themselves or other people from OD or driving. also i bet STD rates will go up (higher than they already are) because being drunk causes people to do stupid things (with or without protection)
The lower age works for other countries because those kids dont see alcohol as a "restricted pleasure" i think the drinking rates are so high here because its like wanting something you cant have. if we lower it right now a million people (the 18-20 year-olds)will get excited and drink all they possibly can (and thats way too much)
I dont have a preference of the drinking age, but i think if we lower it right now in our country it will have adverse effects (at least for a while until the 18 year-olds settle down)
Ideally, if they decide to lower the drinking age, they'll have some way of staggering it so that it doesn't create a huge population of newly legal drinkers. If they want to lower the drinking age to 18, they should at least drop it to 20 and 19 first over a period of time. I would prefer that the first legal 18 year-old drinkers are those who are no older than 10 or 12 now, not 16 or 17.
its a little ridiculous to change a law simply because people are breaking it. the law is there for a good reason. drinking is the cause of many problems, so someone who can get married, fight for their country, and be a responsible adult, would not want to drink.
I believe that this is something that will be a benefit to many people. The temptation of drinking is something many people battle with. The longer you hide something from someone, the more they want to do it and drinking is no exception. I feel like the wait is too long. You can legally get married, live on our own, fight in a war and pay taxes but you can't have a glass of wine with dinner? I think this will help with the binge drinking and alcohol related accidents.
The drinking age most certainly should be lower than 21 years old. Look to
several European countries with drinking ages as low as 15 and you'll see
that binge drinking among youth is significantly lower than in the United
States. Possibly because alcohol in many other countries lack the stigma
of being "cool" and "rebellious" to consume, because teens have always had
the option to consume it. You can even liken to to economics with supply
and demand.. supply of alcohol to underage teens in the United States is
extremely limited (after all, no teen can legally walk into a store and
purchase it.) so when alcohol is readily available in large quantities at
a party, teens choose to consume it without regard to safety, and often in
large quantities. If you don't believe me on this stigma argument, just
look to Amsterdam.. their teens consume much less cannabis on average than
a typical teen in the United States.
Being a forbidden pleasure is no excuse. I didn't start drinking until I was 4 months past 22 years old. I wasn't sober because the law told me to be, it was just a personal decision that I didn't want a drink until then.
The problem is not the age limit or the education about drugs and alchohol. The problem is our cultural need to find an excuse to act stupid and let go of your responsibilities and that affects people of all ages.
The 21 and up crowd staggering their drunk asses up and down Federal Hill or Fell's Point on any given weekend are just as pathetic as the kids in highschool going on a bender at someone's house.
AND P.S. underage drinking may not be a problem in other countries with lower drinking ages, but you can be damn sure that excessive substance abuse still is.
Honestly I'm glad some facet of society has opened discussion on this matter. The drinking age was once 18, and frankly, I think it should be again. If you can be drafted, own a house, drive, and kill yourself slowly with cigarettes, it really makes no sense whatsoever to have the drinking age at 18.
Much of the drive for this was fostered by groups like MADD: Mothers Against Drunk Driving, and other activist groups. While Ihave nothing against them, and in fact think they are a good thing usually, their initial idea which sprouted the push to go to 21 as the age of legality here is not only in error but a bad idea given their intended purpose: to *stop* drunk driving.
You see, moving the drinking age back further only really serves to make people MORE likely to drink and drive (at least that's one commonly held view,which I happen to agree with seeing how friends of mine responded at their 21st birthdays and other whom I knew who had either illegally started drinking years before 21, or who came from countries where it was legal to do so) becuase they've had to wait that much longer for the priviege of drinking. After all, setting the age 3yrs higher than everything else does seem prima facie to give drinking alcohol an inflated sense of importance, the only other such age regulated thing I can think of not available once you are no longer a minor is being elected to political office (you have to be 35 to be president etc.).
This seems really ridiculous to me, drunk driving and other negligence is illegal at every age, and the ones who are going to do it most are the ones who really don't care, whether their 21 or 41, it doesn't matter. Age isn't the problem people caring enough not to do it is, and we can't wait till 21, or really, even 18 to teach that, try 15 or so more likely.
And at 21, even if a person has been driving since 16, their extra experience won't really help because once they're drunk that goes out the window anyway, and deciding whether or not to get behind the wheel in the first place has NOTHING to do with driving experience.
In many other countries like Germany people can drink well before 18, and as a result there is no perceived sense by younger people of alcohol as some naughty rite of passage which must be appeased by a wild dangerous party or parties to end all others. Lending to the lack of a sense of excessive awe is the ready availability of alcohol in countires like this, one of my friends who lived in Germany for many years reports that even McDonalds served their own beer! With it being as common as that how could anyone develop much of a sense of over-excitement all of a sudden once they hit 18, 21 or any other specific age?
I also lived next to a family that came here from Germany many years back, who told me it was also common for people to drink beer and other beverages over there more often because in certain regions the drinking water isn't very good. And if there was any doubt in my mind about this I later saw the mother letting their 4-year old daughter sip beer several times through-out the night!
Now I'm not in support of that by any means at all, if for no other reason that pure biology, but I'd be willing to bet a decent amount of money that when this girl does come of age here, she won't be anywhere near as likely as her American raised counter-parts to do something stupid like driving drunk or drinking to the point of bodily harm at a party. What would be the motivation for her, or anyone of similar background?
When people are taught about the not just the dangers of it but about alcohol in general from an earlier age, they learn about it gradually, and learn things like drinking responsibly, and more importantly HOW, in other words, WHAT is involved in drking responsibly, not just growing up hearing the phrase in commercials which over glamorize drinking in every other respect.
This makes it easier for them to understand what they're getting into in the midst of peer pressure situations, and hopefully not be ropped-in to doing something dangerous as easily as they would be otherwise (and not, say, drink to the point of passing-out on your back and then having to have someone like myself hear you choking to death on your own vomit and then hastily have several people try to save you and still having to call the ambulance after your airways are clear because you're going into shock, which is exactly what I had to do thanks to some idiot who didn't know when to quit, in someone else's appartment here at UMBC late last year--and my fiancee and I weren't even taking part in the party anymore! The fool later bitched us both out for having called at all, saying the doctors told her that her levels were fine--of course they were, after you vomited all of the alcohol out after we cleared your airways and you recovered from shivering and asking delusionally for your mommy--next time remind me not to save a life...apparently no good deed goes unpunished).
To top all of the age lingo off, if what I've heard is true, then though states can still control their own drinking age, none do lower it because if they drop it below 21, the federal govt. will cut off their federal funding. I'm not sure that's true so if anyone would care to check that for me it would be a good topic as part of a side discussion here.
So, in conclusion, yes, I think we should move the age back to 18 and start teaching kids much earlier, at around 15 or so, maybe 14, it will save a lot of people in the long run.
Is smoking cigs not bad for you either? But thats legal at 18.
Doesn't going to war put you at risk of losing a limb or even your life? But thats legal at 18.
Other countries legal limit is 18 and they don't seem to have a bigger problem than we do. If anything, they don't seem to have to reinforce the law as much either.
If the alcohol lobby was as big and powerful as the tobacco lobby, the drinking age would be 18 already. Hear that, budweiser? Get going already! Your constituents need you!
/sarcasm
I guess they're counting on the fact that people drink more if they're NOT allowed to :\
The drinking age makes no logical sense to me.
If it was switched around and people started drinking at 18 and driving at 21, they'd hopefully have learned to control their drinking and be aware of how much it affects fine motor skills and reaction times and all that fun stuff.
But if someone is allowed to drink for the first time when they're 21, they're already driving by that time. People forget how to WALK when they're drunk; how in heck are we supposed to tell the brake from the gas?
@Ulrich:
I believe there has been a movement in Maryland to do something similar to what you described - that is, increasing the driving age to something like 21.
At first glance I'd say lower drinking age and higher driving age is a great idea. The problem that comes to mind, though, is work. How would high school graduates be able to get around if they couldn't drive?
Perhaps the answer is something in between, where the "provisional" license lasts until 21?
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