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I haven’t thought it through very far. But temperamentally, I’m for more freedom and more responsibility. So my instinct would be to lower the age while severely punishing impaired driving. And when I say impaired, I don’t mean just booze. I mean cell phones, sleep deprivation, and sex acts while the car is moving.

Have any of you seen a study that compares the degree of driving impairment caused by various blood-alcohol levels with the degree of driving impairment caused by talking on a cell phone (even with speakerphone or headphone)? I’d like to see the data. I’ll throw in $1,000 if the study includes a third group of subjects who were getting blow jobs at the wheel, plus my life savings if the participants were randomly assigned.

I've always been of a mind to lower the drinking age to 16 and raise the driving age to 21. Let children learn to learn alcohol responsibility first before you allow them to drive a dangerous weapon.

What is to be gained by lowering the drinking age? I hace a very hard time believing that there is currently more underage drinking going on because its "underground." As a former underground drinker myself (is anyone not?), my friends and I were always looking for someone over 21 to procure the booze. And then suddenly I was 21, and, wouldn't you know it, I found myself in the liquor store on more than one occaision. I drank more after I was able to buy it myself, and didn't have to work out the logistics of sneaking around.

As you might suspect, I'm not that big an alarmist on teen drinking. But I simply don't get the arguement that reducing the drinking age would decrease binge drinking. As for Europe, they drive less, which might be a factor. I also think that we tend to oversimplify the issue by saying that alcohol is "not a problem" in Europe. Either way, I'm not sure that their teens are the best model for ours.

I just don't see the benefit.

Actually, I would be in favor of eliminating the drinking age entirely. Parents should be responsible for raising their children and teaching them responsibility when it comes to drinking. An occasional glass of wine with dinner is not going to cause permanent harm to a child old enough to be able to drink from a regular glass. In my family it was considered normal for a child to have a glass of wine with Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner. Having a bit too much to drink on New Year's Eve as an 8-year-old taught me more about the effects of alcohol than any lecture in school ever could (and without endangering anyone on the road).

Interesting. I cant quite make up my mind as to whether or not this is a good idea.

On one hand, one of my oldest arguments against legalization of pot is that we cant handle the legal drugs we already have. One of the reasons I have a cell phone is to call the police if I see a drunk driver - and I've done it, too. Its not as common where I drive now - Rhode Islanders seem to not need drink to make them dangerous behind the wheel - but it was a very common sight when I lived in Dallas. Nothing is within walking distance in Texas - nothing. So, if you want to go to a bar and drink, you've gotta drive there. And a lot of people drink to get drunk - so the end result is that around 2am, thereabouts, when the bars all let out, you've got a lot of drunk drivers on the highways - and most of them are speeding. Its sort of habit - people who've only driven in the East wouldnt get it - you have to speed in Texas, or you'd never get anywhere.

It seems alarmingly common that teenagers are killing themselves with cars. They go to a party, get trashed, and wrap their car around a telephone pole - and take their friends with them. Nor is it rare to hear of college kids drinking themselves to death. A recent poster in this thread said that part of the problem was binge drinking on the part of teenagers - I do agree. We dont teach our children that drinking is a skill - if children are taught anything about alcohol - its not the practical skills. I'm a skilled drinker - I know to be warry of drinks where I cant taste the alcohol. I know what will get me drunk, I know how to behave drunk, I know I can behave drunk. Had a friend of mine once comment that he'd never seen me drunk, wherein I replied 'Oh yes you have, remember that party where I was doing straight tequilla shots?' Oh, yeah. I just dont act drunk.

Alcohol has been demonized in America for damn near as long as theres been an America. So, the other hand of this argument is that maybe thats the mistake. That we treat alcohol as an evil, as a vice, and so do the same thing with alcohol as we do with sex - we try to restrict it, but also heavily promote it. The end result with alcohol is the steriotypical frat party WOOOO LETS GET WASTED! sort of thing. Maybe lowering the age of drinking would take away some of the cool of breaking the law, the fake I.D. my legal friends buy for me sort of thing.

I'm hard pressed to say one way or the other, though. I'm inclined to say, keep it where it is until theres more data. I wonder however, with the stigma attached to drinking, how valid that data might be....

"No, actually its a sparkling muscatell, one of the finest wines of Idaho." -Steve Martin "The Muppet Movie"

I, also, was raised having wine with dinner. I never had the questioning desire to drink as a teenager as my other friends had.

I am in my 50's and grew up in Michigan. During the year I was 19 they raised the drinking age to 21 from 18. The question that puzzled all the young adults then is still a mystery to me today....Why are you not considered mature enough to drink at 18 but apparently mature enough to be drafted into the military? A drink is dangerous but a gun is not? The comment then was "Apparently you are old enough to defend your country but not responsible enough to have a drink." Quite a contradiction both then and now.

The neverending laws to regulate our morality and self control never cease to amaze me.

When I brought this topic up to my husband he laughed and said, "Don't let them drink alcohol. Just take them out for MacDonalds. That will give them healthy habits to last a lifetime."

In China we once had unexpected company, and I sent my 12-year-old around the corner to get a few bottles of beer, without a thought. It was only later that someone (from the US) made a comment about "the drinking age" and so I asked around, and it turns out there isn't one in China, at least not one that anybody pays attention to.

Of course, drunk driving teens weren't even a possiblity, let alone an issue until recently, because no one had cars. Now that's changing, at least in the upper middle class. Perhaps that will prompt a legislative change there.

Since my grandmother let my dad start drinking beer when he was seven ("let" is probably not the right word-- int he 30s in Chicago, beer came in large bottles and she didn't feel she could or should drink the whole thing, so she got him to drink the other half) I don't think you could say we have a long history of WCTU-like feeling in the family. We've always let the boyos have or try anything we were having, and since they didn't like it, except for Son Number Three, they didn't ask. SNT always got half a glass of beer when I had some til he was about ten when he decided he didn't like it any more.

But they ALL know the drinking and driving rule. Under legal age, NO driving if they've had ANYTHING alcoholic, since any is illegal. And once over the legal drinking age, the limit is ONE. One beer and you can drive. Any more and you can't (unless you're talking about hours in between). It's a rule that ensures complete and total and justified confidence. I know that if I've had one beer I can't get into trouble with John Law (at least for OUI) and if I've had two or more, someone else who has had one or none drives and they can't get into oui trouble either. I think the bac should be a quarter of what it is in most states and that oui should be rewarded with jail and removal of driver's license for a first offence. I think if that were the law, that there would be very few instances of oui and we would all be safer.

Responsibility?

If you want your child to learn responsibility, make them get a job and then they wont have so much free time that they need to turn to drinking.

One of my "rewards" for being gainfully employed from the time I turned 12 years old was that I got to have a beer with my fish on Friday nights. Although that meant I couldn't go out afterwards, since I'd be a minor with alcohol in my system... so it was either a beer with the folks or going out with my friends afterward dinner.

Maybe not for you, but 15 years ago before MADD and the Feds used extortion to raise the drinking age to 21 in Louisiana it was worth more than $15 million dollars in taxes. That's why the first time the Feds came calling threatening to withhold 15 million dollars of Interstate money, LA told them where to stick it. It's only when they upped the ante to ALL Interstate funds that LA capitulated.

I started drinking in New Orleans when I was 16, with the blessing of my parents and the admonition to never get behind the wheel. Because I had permission, I had no problem calling my parents to pick me up if I was drunk. Not so with many of my friends, who drove drunk rather than get into trouble. When I got to college in Florida, I was amazed at all the binge drinking on and off campus. Kids who had lived under parental and federal prohibition didn't know how to enjoy alcohol responsibly and were now making dangerous mistakes at an age where they could be severly punished.

I firmly believe that lowering the drinking age, an educationally obtained "drinking license" suggested by Choosing Responsibility," and decriminalizing actions taken by parents to teach and allow their children to drink responsibly under proper supervision will have a dramatic impact on ALL alcohol related deaths and other tragedies, like date rape.

Sorry, the above post was directed at comments by jwschmidt at the top of the forum, specifically, "I don't see the benefit [of lowering the drinking age]."

jwschmidt: you say you don't get how lowering the drinking age would decrease binge drinking. It's very simple: If you're underage it can be hard to get alcohol (i.e.: at a keg party), but once you find alcohol you usually have as much as you can drink. So if a) you have access to as much alcohol as you want right now but b) you have no idea how/if/when you'll be able to get your hands on more alcohol in the future, then you'll drink as much as you can right now.

But if alcohol were legal and you knew you could get another drink whenever you wanted, you wouldn't be so inclined to binge right now.

Zbird, Bullet, anyone else...

Are you guys really under the impression that getting drunk is an unintended mistake? That when people (teens, 20-somethings, anybody) drink, they never want to get drunk?

Yes, lowering the drinking age would make more sense if drinking were not a recreational activity - a drug. Everyone I know, myself included, is fully capable of having one glass of wine at dinner, or just having that one beer at the bar to be social. But each weekend, Americans of all ages go out looking to get crunked because its fun.

what I'm saying here is that legally allowing someone to drink means allowing them to get drunk. Parents obviously play an important role in teaching their kids "how" to drink, but as almost everyone on this thread has indicated, they are fully capable of doing that now, in their own homes, with the law the way it is.

"The question that puzzled all the young adults then is still a mystery to me today....Why are you not considered mature enough to drink at 18 but apparently mature enough to be drafted into the military? A drink is dangerous but a gun is not? The comment then was "Apparently you are old enough to defend your country but not responsible enough to have a drink." Quite a contradiction both then and now."

This is absolutely true. Either lower the drinking age to the age of majority (18) or raise the age of majority to 21 across the board for everything, drinking age, legal in signing contracts etc.

This argument did come up during Vietnam, and in my state the age was lowered to 18 and then raised again (thanks to MADD lobbying) to 21.

You should not be obligated to fight and possibly die for your country and not have the right to have a legal drink in it. It's ridiculous.

@jwschmidt

"Parents obviously play an important role in teaching their kids "how" to drink, but as almost everyone on this thread has indicated, they are fully capable of doing that now, in their own homes, with the law the way it is."

No they can't. A LOT of states have laws against a parent providing alcohol to their child. Specifically: AZ, CA, UT, ID, ND, NE, KS, OK, AL, TN, IL, MI, IN, FL, NC, PA, NY, VT and NH. <link>, <link>, <link>

As to your other points:

Yes, drinking is recreational. Yes, kids drink to get drunk - so do adults. The difference is that adults are supposed to have learned their threshold, how to control their behavior, and the dangers of excess. How can an 18 year old know these things when he/she has to learn them not under supervision but from his/her similarly ignorant peers?