Bottoms Up, Kids
By Mitch Berg
Chad at the Fraters notes notes one of the things Europeans have consistently gotten right – drinking. Specifically, drinking laws. Chad notes the lethal effect (on few, but tragedy has no minimum threshold) of the 21 minimum age:
Instead of trying to come up with a largely arbitrary age (why twenty-one and not twenty or twenty-two?) when you let people drink legally, why not make it the same age that we legally consider people adults, eighteen? But instead of making it a milestone for being able to drink as much as you want, let’s return it to an event that carries with it added responsibility along with its freedoms.
You’re eighteen. It’s time to grow up and act like an adult. It’s time to be serious about your life. You can drink and have fun, but you’ll be expected to drink like a adult.
You can vote and join the military at 18; you can help determine this nation’s governance, operate a machine gun (in the military), become a cop in some jurisdictions, start training in any number of medical and emergency-response trades…
…but you can’t drink?
In Europe, the “forbidden fruit” aspects of alcohol just don’t exist – and the punishments for inappropriate behavior are sure and strict (you don’t want to get busted for drunk driving anywhere in Europe). Sure, Italian and Scottish footie fans get drunk and obnoxious – but does anyone think that imposing and jacking up a drinking age would change that?
Part of this would involve introducing alcohol at an earlier age in controlled settings. There’s no reason a sixteen-year-old shouldn’t be taught how to enjoy a glass of wine or beer with the family at dinner. Alcohol shouldn’t be a taboo and drinking shouldn’t be all about getting loaded and acting stupid. Kids should be taught both the positive side and the peril of drinking. The message shouldn’t be all or nothing, that you’re either a teetotaler or an alcoholic. The path of moderation is one that far too few Americans discover until well past the time they should have.
What we’re doing now is clearly not working. You can further infantilize society by move the drinking age out again, you can prohibit people from drinking at midnight on their twenty-first birthday (as Minnesota does), and you can warn people all you want about the dangers of binge drinking. But until you change the culture of drinking in America and teach people how to drink responsibly before they reach adulthood, it’s not going to make a difference.
Chad is right.
On that anyway. On the other hand (emphasis added)…
Eric Felten is a cocktail connuissuer
That’d be Connoisseur. I mean, if you’re gonna be a foodie boozie, you’re gonna have to get that one straight, at least…
I’m all about the learning.
November 19th, 2007 at 1:55 pm
Our drinking laws are a reflection of the ‘abstinance only’ foolishness that permeates so much other cultural thought.
Abstain from sex
Abstain from drinking
Abstain from marijuana (Say “no” to Drugs) – one of the remnants of the Reagan era we conveniently forget failed utterly.
These sorts of message don’t work, the facts show it, yet we persist. Maybe the ‘moral majority’ needs to pull it’s head out of it’s rear, and see that not only doesn’t it work now, it NEVER did, none of it. While I applaud your sensibility here, do you argue that our drinking laws are different than some of our ‘conservative’ member’s of society’s attitudes about sex? If not, why support that approach?
Anyway, agree 100%. Enormous evidence from Europe on underage drinking seems to show that early exposure to the idea of alchoholic drinks, what they are and aren’t, coupled with some VERY HARSH laws about drinking and driving, have proven to keep their highways far safer than our attitudes of keep them stupid, stupid.
November 19th, 2007 at 2:15 pm
That’d be Connoisseur. I mean, if you’re gonna be a
foodieboozie, you’re gonna have to get that one straight, at least…Step 2: Learn the proper pronunciation of “Sommelier”.
November 19th, 2007 at 2:23 pm
Learn the proper pronunciation of “Sommelier”.
That was the second coolest thing about (ever-so-briefly) dating a wine importer.
November 19th, 2007 at 2:52 pm
The only argument that people have for the drinking age not being 18 is that more high school kids could get easy access to alcohol. These people obviously haven’t been in high school in a very long time. If you want beer, you can get it.
Of course, being 20 years old, my viewpoint may be skewed by my immaturity and my inability to think critically.
November 19th, 2007 at 3:04 pm
Believe it or not, I actually had the word spelled correctly at one point, but it must have been changed in the various revisions. Where are my gatekeepers and editors?
November 19th, 2007 at 3:06 pm
I regret the error.
November 19th, 2007 at 4:48 pm
Back when I was a pup back in my state you could get beer at 18 and booze at 21. Seemed like a reasonable compromise. Well, except that at that time I didn’t like the taste of beer but did like wine.
If you’re considered mature enough to put your life on the life for your country, you’re old enough to accept the responsibility of drink.
November 19th, 2007 at 4:58 pm
Of course, being 20 years old, my viewpoint may be skewed by my immaturity and my inability to think critically.
Don’t worry, Jeff. The Executive Center of your brain will become fully active in the next two to three years.
I personally would like to see the legal age set at a flat 20 for everything. 20, you’re an adult. 19.5, wait six months.
November 19th, 2007 at 6:38 pm
When I was young, there wasnt much you couldnt legally do at 18 other than buy a pistol. I waited until I was 19 and 20 to buy a couple of them. The legal age was 21. So I imagine that not being 21 isn’t much of a henderance to buying beer. We did it at 16. Now that I am much older I think the legal age to buy a beer should be around 35. Unless your female. Then 25. That should clear the riff raff out of my bars. Plus make the bar across the street from where I live quieter. Damn kids. Don’t they know people need to get up in the morning and go to work? grumble grumble.
November 19th, 2007 at 7:41 pm
We could drink 3.2 beer in Colorado at 18…everything else at 21 (60’s and 70’s). Luckily we didn’t like “everything else” and most of us were all fine with drinking 3.2 starting at 16…and buying at 16 or younger. I had a Hispanic boyfriend with a moustache at age 16 who could buy hard stuff (at a drive-up window!). Up here on the border, though Canadian legal age was 18 for everything..and it went back and forth a couple times in Minnesota between 19 and 21. No one cared-they drank legally in Manitoba or they drank illegally here…always have…always will. I was a married woman with the 2nd kid on the way when I was finally able to drink legally (hmmm…that doesn’t sound good, does it?! I meant that’s the age I turned 21-had my son on my birthday).
November 20th, 2007 at 11:38 am
Of course, with the prohibitionists in MADD, it’ll be a cold day in hell before we ever see the drinking age reduced.