Lowering the drinking age to 18?

Question

I am actually above 21 and never drink, but the issue of lowering the drinking age to 18 seems to be coming up alot. do you think the age should be lowewed?

An example of a similar case was lowering the voting age from 21 to 18. Nixon signed it because he figured if at 18 you can be drafted into vietnam, you should also be able to vote.

So in today's world, why give equal responsibilities and equal consequenses but not equal rights? If you can fight and die for your country at 18, be charged as an adult for crimes at 18, and be fully responsible for your actions at 18, shouldnt you be able to drink? Society wants to place all these restrictions on young ppl (who at 18 are adults whether you want them to be or not) but dont want to give them equal rights such as drinking, and some states you have to be 19 to buy tobacco or 21 to rent a car......so if you have equal consequences and equal responsibilities, shouldnt you be allowed to drink responsibly?

Answer 1

i agreee. =]

Answer 2

I agree.  Other countries that have low legal drinking ages dont have issues like we do.  It is the whole, its easy to do and it is taboo so we are going to rebel and do it.  To tell the truth I got most of my drinking done with in high school.  Now that I'm 28 I rarely drink at all.  I still have beer in my fridge from last superbowl.

Answer 3

I agree with grannynightgown's suggestion that the drinking age should be younger than the driving age, but strongly disagree that "sixteen and seventeen year olds have a huge number of accidents because they are too immature to drive. "

Sixteen and seventeen-year-olds have a huge number of accidents because they are beginners, and a beginner at sixteen is just as risky as a beginner at thirty.

Honestly, I think kids should be allowed to drink beer and wine at around twelve or earlier WITH parental supervision. Maybe without parental supervision at fifteen or sixteen. Maybe hard liquor at around sixteen as well. With a younger drinking age, the ideal age for driving would probably be 18-20. Really, an 18-year-old should be able to do anything a 40-year-old can do.

Answer 4

Because of the Vietnam war the vote age and the drinking age in all states was lowered to 18 . During the Reagan administration the states were forced with loss of federal funding if they did not raise the drinking age to 21 . Why ? It should be 18 .

Answer 5

Here's my issue with the drinking age as it stands.

Currently, kids go off to college and begin drinking illegally at eighteen when the twenty-one year old college students supply them with alcohol. Many kids end up binge-drinking or developing alcohol problems.

If the drinking age was eighteen, kids entering high school would be supplied alcohol by the eighteen year olds. But, when you are in high school you have a greater amount parental supervision, and it's likely that if you binge-drink or become an alcoholic, your parents will notice and do something about it.

Now, to counteract this, the driving age should be raised to eighteen. Sixteen and seventeen year olds have a huge number of accidents because they are too immature to drive. Sixteen and seventeen year olds who have a greater access to alcohol will be even worse.

So teenagers would have about four years of drinking with parental intervention if they do it irresponsibly. After four years they will learn how to drink responsibly, similar to how college graduates usually have learned to drink responsibly.

The difference is that high school students will be stopped in their experimentation before they end up dead like many college students do. By the time these high school students go off to college, they will be able to drink responsibly without needing adult intervention.

Now, the reason you have to be a certain age to rent a car has nothing to do with the law. Rental companies require you to be a certain age because car insurance costs a lot more when you're younger than it does when you're older. The car rental companies can't afford to take the risk. It is a business decision, not a legal one.

Likewise, Mothers Against Drunk Driving does make the choice. They have lobbyists and give donations to political campaigns. The candidate with the most money generally wins the election. So it almost amounts to political suicide to oppose MADD.

Answer 6

mothers against drunk driving will never allow it to be lowered to 18

Answer 7

There has to be a line drawn somewhere. This is where people fail to realize. You can ask the same question as far as the age of retirement. Why does Social Security make you reach a certain age before paying out retirement? You see how this works? If you look at statistics you will clearly understand that there is a definite correlation to age of people and responsibility. You have more accidents with younger drivers getting there license and you will have more drunks on the road if you lower the age of drinking..It is a FACT, period. You can have a person reach the age of majority and still put restrictions on what they can purchase,see or do because just being an adult doesn't just give you a right to do whatever you want in America.  

Answer 8

Probably.

Full legal age should be 18 or they should raise draft registration to 21, but then part of college would be free (as it is in many countries)

Answer 9

I see no reason not to lower the drinking age to 18 when for all other purposes an 18 year old is treated as an adult.  I actually read somewhere (I wish I could remember where) that they have less problems with alcohol abuse in European countries where it is normal have wine with dinner every night.  That is because things are withheld seem more mysterious and when a person gets access to them they are more tempting.  When I was 18, the drinking age was still 18.  People did experiment with alcohol a lot in college, but it's just postponing this experimentation to 21 if you have a higher drinking age.  It's not like a 21-year old is so much more mature than an 18-year old.  And if they were, then they shouldn't be allowed to vote or go to war until they were 21..

Answer 10

The US has been stuggling with this for a long time now.

The sad truth is that most of the responsibilities come earlier, and the privliedges come later.

The drinking age: In the late 80s/early 90's, some federal bureaucrat convinced Congress that they should tell the states "you have two choices, raise the drinking age to 21, or get cut off from federal highway money"

I was in college at LSU from 90-94, and Louisiana was the only state that hadn't complied (well, they sort of, but told the police not to enforce it), and so the drinking age was 18 still.  Those were fun days.... 8^@