Raise the drinking age
 

I am in the processes of writing a letter to the La Crosse Tribune, City Council, and posting this letter on community bulletin boards all over the city. I am proposing raising the city age of consumption to 25, and suggesting stiff mandatory penalties for violators. These will include, mandatory jail time for first offenders, including the people who are buying alcoholic beverages for minors, and permanent loss of liquor licences for the retailers and wholesalers, of these beverages.
This has been brought on by another death of a young man, on the Mississippi levee at Riverside Park. He was only 21, and had a BA of .26. The city is in an uproar just last year another young man died, in the same area under the same circumstances.
The UW-L, Vitterbro, and WWTC are silent, just the usual poor baby statements and candle lite vigil. The local OctoberFest has become a reason for binge drinking among the population.
The madness must stop, before others are wasted needlessly. I am doing this as a concerned citizen, I don't want to be an a$$hole...

better put on your flamesuit.. its going to get toasty in here
:flamer:

I for one wouldn't mind raising the drinking age to 22-23, just so a majority of college age people can't legally drink and get wasted and do all the horrible things that ensue.

I'm 19; I've been drinking pretty much whenever I want (which, admittedly, does not fall under "college age people getting wasted") for the past 2ish years.

Getting booze when you're underage is not hard. It's only sketchy if you have to solicit non-friends; in any other situation, it's pretty much completely safe, legally, within the general bounds of "don't make a scene, break shit, or get hurt & nobody will ask questions."

Now, again, I'm a relatively unambitious drinker & like to keep a low profile anyway; but nevertheless, I know (of) a great many underaged kids who drink to excess on a regular basis. Sure, they get written up or what-have-you, but their age is not stopping them.

So, I ask: what would raising the minimum age accomplish? Changing the legality of an action does not directly prevent people from doing it; it only discourages them. And that discouragement is a remarkably punitive one. I suspect that, with a fair deal more work, a more fundamental sort of solution could be found (and, ultimately, politically more feasible one: anyone between 21 and the new drinking age will resist the change, along with the majority of drinking establishments.)

Consider what the root cause of the drinking problem is: I doubt that it is age. We live in a culture that handles alcohol poorly, both in terms of how we ingest it and how we educate our children about it. (In France, children are gradually introduced to drinking wine w/ dinner from a young age (12ish?); there is a strong social stigma attached to being shitfaced in public. Here it generally just shrugged about.)

I have a problem with politicians making it illegal to drink until 21 while it is mandatory to kill at 18. It makes no sense whatever to sign a kid into the military and send him off to waste others at an age when he "isn't old enough" to buy cigarettes, booze, or "adult entertainment" and, until very recently, was not even a full citizen because he couldn't vote for or against the people doing this to him.

Nevertheless, idiots are going to drink no matter what the legal age is. And Americans will continue to send grief counselors to schools and hold candelight vigils instead of teaching kids to be responsible and jailing the drivers who aren't to keep them away from the rest of us.

Personally, I think it isn't the age of the people who drink, but the culture of drinking they grow up in. This is not a criticism of American culture - we have a similar problem here.

Ideally, children should be introduced to the concept of social drinking as early as possible. Parents who take their children out to restaurants, or have the odd glass of wine with the family meal teach their offspring to drink responsibly.

The US currently has the highest legal drinking age in the world. I don't think raising it will help teach a more responsible attitude to consumption, it will just drive it underground, as did Prohibition.

America has a culture of binge drinking and it is somewhat due to "forbidden fruit" due to the age 21 limit putting all kinds of additional psychological layers on it. Raising it to 25 will increase, not decrease the problem.

People must be free to make their own choices, even if they are poor choices.

I'm with Sundae Girl. I think its cultural and therefor, dont think altering the legal age will change a thing.

I often wonder whether lowering the age limit over there might have more of a positive impact?
I mean, you lower the drinking age limit and let these 18-19 year olds into clubs/pubs....are they more likely to party *sensibly* in a *controlled* environment, than they would be sneaking around someones house and thinking up dumbshit to do??

My parents introduced us all to drinking at a early age. If Mum or Dad went to the bottleshop, we were asked what we would like to try, 1 can was bought and we were encouraged to drink it with the rest of the family.

Legal drinking age here is 18.

I always thought it was a bit dumb to have these teenagers, become *adults*, get their license, drink legally and vote...ALL on the same birthday.

ditto

As Sundae said, parents should teach their kids to drink responsibly when they are young.

The thing that kept me from (most) drinking during college -- my dad had given me the taste for good wine and good beer when I was still a teenager. Damn hard to find the good stuff at frat parties.

For me, this is another case of "its not someone else's fault if some damn kid goes and drinks himself to death". I'm personally against alcohol in general, but I'm also against having a drinking age. Or at least raising the one thats already in place.

I wonder if it isn't worse in the States because we claim people are responsible for their actions, but continue to write law and adjudicate cases that fly in the face of that claim?

If anything should be done with the drinking age, it should be lowered. And parents should teach their kids from a young age.

I've read studies supporting that idea. It makes sense. This article explains that theory in greater length:

http://www.indiana.edu/~engs/articles/fruit.html

Decriminalization can do much to change the ideas of youth culture. Let's make getting a library card or going to a bookstore illegal until age 21. Those kids might fall all over themselves getting the forbidden books!

Replacing alcohol with marijuana would be a big improvement. It's not lethal, doesn't ruin your liver, I've heard that it doesn't give you lung cancer, and people get mellow and stupid using it, not aggressive and stupid. :2cents:

I'd be all for that.. beats having thousands of girls assaulted and raped on campuses every year because of alcohol.