Drinking Age

[Jazza]

I posted this in OOT, it seems most people reckon the drinking age should not be 21, so whats up with the 21 drinking age in the states? or do most americans actually think 21 is good, and it's just OOT who thinks it should be lowered?

[bholdr]

actually, since i turned 21, i've cared very little about what the legal drinking age is, though i do think 19 would be a good age for everything... drinking, smoking, porn, gambling...voting, military service, maybe even driving... all at one age. simple.

[kurto]

I think the problem with drinking isn't the age at what people start. Its our countries attitude towards it. Lowering or raising it isn't going to change the real problems.

With that being said, I suspect lowering it would be at least a baby-step forward. I think parents should allow their young teenagers to drink wine with dinner. Don't treat alcohol like its some 'magic adult party drink'... try to take away the 'mystery' of drinking.

Way way way back when I was in college, I seem to recall that many of the European students were very 'mature' about drinking. They weren't the binge drinkers, they weren't puking out their guts in the morning... I suspect we have one of the more unhealthy youth attitudeds towards drinking.

[wacki]

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I think the problem with drinking isn't the age at what people start. Its our countries attitude towards it. Lowering or raising it isn't going to change the real problems.

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I call couldn't disagree more. Who is going to be more responsible? The kid that grows up drinking with his parents in Germany or the kid that learns to drink by breaking the law and being secretive about it in the US?

Making alcohol illegal (not to mention many other drugs) is one of the dumbest ideas ever. You think we would of learned that from the prohibition era, but nope....

[nicky g]

I was watching a news piece here about some 15 year-olds kids smashing up some estate and when they asked one of them if he thought it was fair to other people, he said no, but tha tthere was nothing else to do. I thought back to what I was doing when I was his age, and I was in the pub. If you behave badly at night on the street, granted you run the risk of getting arrested but you can normally get away well in advance. If you behave badly in a pub, you get kicked out and barred, and that's bad. So we behaved pretty well. And as Belgian pubs are open pretty much all night, we stayed there until we wanted to go home (in the UK people get kicked out absurdly early and put their drunken energy into fighting, singing on night buses, generally being a dick etc). I conclude that the drinking age should be as low as possible, and pubs open as late as possible, everywhere to keep teenagers off the streets and out of trouble.

[nicky g]

I forgot to mention that beer is super cheap in Brussels, which made it affordable for us to drink. All nations should strive towards cheaper beer.

[ACPlayer]

make hoegarten cheap.

tax the crap out of bud, miller, schlitz, coors all sorry excuses for a beer. Americans deserve real beer too.

[bholdr]

hoegarrden is a good beer, but one just can't drink a dozen of themin a night and not expect to get fat.

cheap beer has its place.

[Rex Nihilo]

Keep drunks off the streets by keeping the bars open? What happens when these idiots run out of money? (Maybe they'll pass out first, but then what do you do with them?)

[nicky g]

Not drunks in general, teenagers. I addressed that point by mentioning the need for cheap beer.