one of my friends came from germany and was talking about how over there people as young as the age of 12 drink beer and other liqours. this got me thinking, would lowing the drinking age help combat all the drunk teens? some kids i know say they do it becuase its illegal and its cool and such while my friend said over there that there isnt that many kids drinking to get ‘smashed’ and such. what do you people think about this? should we lower the drinking age or keep it the same or raise it?
some say lowering the drinking age doesn’t reduce the number of drunken teens. It merely transfers it. IN NZ the drinking age is 18 and the issues stemmed from the previous reduction (20 to 18) haven’t changed significantly. However, the dichotomy between other “adult” related issues such as driving, voting, smoking, enlisting in the armed forces, have been reduced. The old argument of being able to die for your country but not drink legally within it is a powerful one.
The general argument for such a high drinking age is based around DUI incidents.
Depends on the culture.
In places like China where there is not a strong cultural influence towards drinking having a non-existant drinking age wouldn’t make that much difference than if it were. Some underage people would try and rebel but overall it wouldn’t have as much effect. In Japan they have vending machines selling grog in the streets and they can do so because of the lack of social draw towards alcohol. A Grog Vending machine would be looted and stolen over here before the week is out.
In places where drinking is a highly accepted social event like Australia, Ireland and some carabiean countries amongst others, the social situation has to be weighed up against the health hazards. Direct health hazards are pretty self explanatory however there are other indirect health hazards. Can you imagine a drunk little gang of kids leaving a pub and getting the absolute snot beaten out of them because they couldn’t hold their mouth? Parents are going to be calling for tighter restrictions on the drinking laws before the first little sod even reachs the hospital.
Actually if you ask me there is a more sensible way to deal with this.
Drop alcohol service age to 18 like “the rest of the world”. It makes sense. But keep the strict drink driving laws. They are there to prevent morons killing people. The oddity is that you technically can be carted off to join the army and kill people at 18 but not drink…
But add the following law. It is legal for parents to give their children a drink and that any meal that is offered with a drink for kids above the age of say 14 (I think its that much in the UK) is provided with said drink. That way kids see that there is nothing “THAT GREAT” about drinking. The whole point with americans is that they don’t understand how to drink. They drink to get hammered. There is no joyous middle for them. The way I see it is there are two reasons. One poor drinking age, by the time they are 21 they drink like they are 15 and keep getting wasted rather than “get merry” and maintain. The other is “crap alcohol”. Your beer is atrocious dudes. Get something good and enjoy it rather than buying budweiser (Bah! Budweiser is a delicious drink filled with a nice hoppy flavour and is delightfully cheap… When you drink the original as opposed to that atrocity that carries that name and parades itself as the “king of beers”.). Enjoy the stuff, its nice.