Oh great, as if driving on American highways isn't bad enough, now we got a group of pooh-heads who want to lower the drinking age to 18. I've heard some of the arguments that have been made like...

"If you're old enough to join the Army and go kill people, you are old enough to legally drink."

Not so fast pea brain...you get to kill people in the Army AFTER you go through intensive training and only with supervision (hopefully) under combat conditions. Now, if we send the 18 year olds (who want to drink) through boot camp, and then let them drink under the supervision of Sgt Lee Ermie, and only when they are in a firefight, I might go for that.

"The data on drunk driving is debatable."

Yep, and I can find people who would debate that the world is round. Bottom line...lets see you argue that increasing the amount of legal drinker will result in lower numbers of drunk drivers.

"Making underage drinking a crime drives it underground."

That's right, and bank robbing, child molesting and embezzlement are driven underground also. Should we legalize those crimes as well?

"Other countries have lower drinking ages?"

Other countries have lots of other laws we may not want to have
here...like cutting off the hands of thieves, and stoning adulterers.

"If you shouldn't drink at 18 because your brain is not fully formed, we should raise the age to 25."

Now there's an idea I like, with science backing it.

"If drinking is good for you, force people to take alcohol!"

Lots of things are good for you, but people choose not to do them with no ill affects on others. Exercise, reading books, and not eating enough fiber, and I can't remember hearing of anyone killed by a driver who was driving while constipated.

Lower the drinking age? Some idea aren't even wrong.

old people drive drunk too

some judges,police,actors,actress, preachers, teachers, etc; etc; drive drunk

all types drive drunk

Madd members drive drunk

Of all Westernised countries, I will bet you fifty cents that the only one with a drinking age of 21 is the United States. I would also bet (another fifty cents) that the highest rate of deaths from drunk driving accidents is right here in the US.

Even if that were not the case, I can't say that I've seen a single fatality accident in the press in the past six months where a teenager was drunk. (Driving badly is another story - you don't have to be drunk to drive like an ass.) We're in Chicago, so it isn't like we're talking about a small sample size. There were plenty of over-30 drunks who killed people in the same time period, that's pretty ordinary, actually, it happens at least twice a week.

Ask yourself this: Did you ever have trouble getting your hands on alcohol when you were underage? I did a straw poll of about a hundred people on this not too long ago, and not one person said it was impossible. Not one. If you think that having the official drinking age at 21 actually stops kids from drinking if they want to, you are dreaming in Technicolor.

People are adults under just about any law I can think of at the age of 18 in this country and most others. They answer to no parental authority, they pay taxes, and yes, they join the military. 21 is an arbitrary, foolish limit on people who are already adults in every sense of the word.

Your arguments are the same old hat that we've listened to for the last zillion years. They weren't valid then and they aren't now.

You use the same tired old arguments he just shot down. Did you not READ the post before jerking your knee?

I'm not even going to bother pointing it out to you.

I think that in this argument, the issue isn't so much the actual drinking age as the fact that there might actually be a change in the offing.

Truthfully, there is no real argument for or against any specific age. An a$$hole is an a$$hole no matter what the age, changing the legal age at which that person can drink and act out their nature is meaningless.

Where I grew up, the drinking age was 18, which made zero difference to the age where people actually started drinking. The same applies here. It all depends how much money and effort you want to spend on enforcement, which really boils down to how much money you think your taxes can support.

Put it this way, if an 18-year-old kid can go to prison in an adult jail or face the death penalty, who are we to say that he can't get pissy drunk before he turns himself in?

OK, ceteris paribus, lowering the drinking age will make alcohol more widely available to kids. Yes, they CAN get it now, but there are SOME barriers, which means that overall obtainability of alcohol by people 18-20 will increase.

Now, would the HARM done by this age group increase as a result? Having to obtain alcohol illegaly changes the incentive structure of the situation. There is a greater incentive to binge, and people are much more likely to get drunk when they drink at all. Lowering the drinking age would make 18-20 years olds drink less heavily when they do drink, and basically behave more like the rest of us with respect to alcohol.

I am not sure which way the overall cost-benefit would fall out. It is certainly not dead obvious one way or the other.

I honestly can't think of one legitimate reason to keep the drinking age at 18. At this age, a child officially and legally becomes an adult, and should receive all of the rights and responsibilities that an adult gets.

If people out there truly believe an 18-20 year old isn't responsible enough to drink, then they should go about raising the age to become a legal adult. We should either drop the drinking age to 18, OR raise the age to vote, give consent, enlist in the military, sign a contract, etc. to 21.

If we're really so worried about drunk driving, we should also consider having zero tolerance to it. If somebody gets a DUI, then they should loose their license for good. Problem solved.