what do you think? i think the age should be changed to 18. Many foreign countries have lower drinking age limits, yet they dont have near as many problems as the U.S.


http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20249460/

Over the strong objection of federal safety officials, a quiet movement to lower the legal drinking age to 18 is taking root as advocates argue that teenagers who are allowed to vote and fight for their country should also be able to enjoy a beer or two.

The proposal, which is the subject of a national petition drive by the National Youth Rights Association, has been studied in a handful of states in recent years, including Florida, Wisconsin, Vermont and Missouri, where supporters are pushing a ballot initiative.

Opponents of the idea point to a reported rise in binge drinking as teenagers increasingly turn to hard liquor as proof that minors should not be allowed to drink, but proponents look at the same data and draw the opposite conclusion. “Raising the drinking age to 21 was passed with the very best of intentions, but it’s had the very worst of outcomes,” said David J. Hanson, an alcohol policy expert at the State University of New York-Potsdam. “Just like during national Prohibition, the law has pushed and forced underage drinking and youthful drinking underground, where we have no control over it.”

But Mark Rosenker, chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board, countered: “Why would we repeal or weaken laws that save lives? It doesn’t make sense.”  

Different laws in different states
As it happens, there is no such thing as a “federal legal drinking age.” Many states do not expressly prohibit minors from drinking alcohol, although most of those do set certain conditions, such as its use in a religious ceremony or in the presence of a parent or other guardian.

The phrase refers instead to a patchwork of state laws adopted in the mid-1980s under pressure from Congress, which threatened in 1984 to withhold 10 percent of federal highway funds from states that did not prohibit selling alcohol to those under the age of 21. By 1988, all 50 states had complied.Libertarian groups and some conservative economic foundations, seeing the age limits as having been extorted by Washington, have long championed lowering the drinking age. But in recent years, many academics and non-partisan policy groups have joined their cause for a different reason: The age restriction does not work, they say. Drinking has gone on behind closed doors and underground, where responsible adults cannot keep an eye on it.

“It does not reduce drinking. It has simply put young adults at greater risk,” said John M. McCardell, former president of Middlebury College in Vermont, who this year set up a non-profit organization called Choose Responsibility to push for a lower drinking age.

McCardell offers what he calls a simple challenge:

“The law was changed in 1984, and the law had a very specific purpose, and that was to prohibit drinking among those under the age of 21,” he said. “The only way to measure the success of that law is to ask ourselves whether, 23 years later, those under 21 are not drinking.”

So are they?

The federal government’s National Survey on Drug Use and Health found that in 2005, the most recent year for which complete figures are available, 85 percent of 20-year-old Americans reported that they had used alcohol. Two out of five said they had binged — that is, consumed five or more drinks at one time — within the previous month.“The evidence is very clear,” McCardell said. “It has had no effect.”

James C. Fell, a former federal highway safety administrator who is a senior researcher on alcohol policy with the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation, acknowledged that “it’s not a perfect law. It doesn’t totally prevent underage drinking.”

But Fell said the age restriction “does save lives. We have the evidence.”Lower deaths rates disputed
The evidence, widely touted by Rosenker of the NTSB, Mothers Against Drunk Driving and other activist groups, rests in a study by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, or NHTSA, which estimated that from 1975 to 2003, higher drinking ages saved 22,798 lives on America’s roadways.

“Twenty-five thousand lives is a lot of people to set aside when you’re looking at a current problem,” said Brian Demers, a 20-year-old student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who is a member of MADD’s board of directors.

That figure is disputed by proponents of lowering the drinking age. They have questioned the NHTSA study, which did not explain how it arrived at its estimate. Moreover, it counted any accident as “alcohol-related” if any participant was legally drunk — including victims who may not have been responsible for the accident.“The methodology used has been widely criticized by scholars,” said Hanson, of SUNY-Potsdam, who called the report “really more of a guesstimate” that showed only a correlation of numbers, not a causal relationship. In fact, he said, alcohol-related traffic fatalities among minor drivers were already declining before 1984, when the drinking-age measure was passed.

Barrett Seaman, author of “Binge: What Your College Student Won’t Tell You,” echoed Hanson’s assessment, saying, “Those statistics are a little suspicious.”

Even so, Rosenker said Tuesday, alcohol is still the leading cause of death among teenagers in highway crashes.

“The data show that when teens drink and drive they are highly unlikely to use seat belts,” he said. “These are the facts, and it would be a serious mistake and a national tragedy to weaken existing drinking age laws.”

Adults ‘written out of the equation’
To McCardell, however, the real problem is that we are not teaching teenagers how to drink responsibly.

Choose Responsibility proposes lowering the drinking age to 18, but only in conjunction with “drinking licenses,” similar to driver’s licenses, mandating alcohol education for those ages 18 to 21.

“Education works,” McCardell said, but “it’s never been tried. Now it’s mandatory only after you’ve been convicted of DUI. That is not an act of genius.”  

Heyl no.  

I had to risk imprisonment to get my fake ID when I was 18-19 and wait until 21 to formally get the real deal.

Ultimately I don't think it matters either way.  The one positive note is that if it were 18, 18 year olds would drink in bars where there are more 'adults' around rather than in dorm rooms where the real binge drinking occurs.  Maybe this would help avoid accidents or less out of control drunks, but who knows.

On a tangent, when I was in college, they were first starting to make note of binge drinking.  They said more than 5 beers in one sitting was binge drinking...at least with my buddies, 5 beers in one sitting was called warmup.  I think the survey I filled out said I was potentially an alcoholic because I drank more than 18 servings a week...heh..  

hey- look at it from the foreign country point of view- they are very open about secs- so whos to say that the lower drinking age....... might be a good thing?.. that is to keep drunk people OFF THE ROAD and in bed more. idk. jk kinda. just food for thought. haha- that would be funny if things turned out that way.
but look at it this way. kids go out drinking cuz they are doing something they arent supposed to be doing. right? so if you make it legal it wont be that much of an issue in their hollow little heads.  

When I was 18, almost everyone I knew drank.  But most were very stupid about it. As mentioned earlier there are positives and negatives to lowering the drinking age.  I think it makes sense beacuse either way they are still going to drink.  Alcohol is so easy to get when you are underage.

On a side note, I took that survey to...  ummm... yeah... same boat you were in.  

I don't know if this is common to everyone else here, but I personally noticed a steep decline in alcohol consumption for me and my friends after we were all 21.  Granted, the first few months of being 21 was a blur, but after that, it became common and hence less of a thrill.  

i agree with the decline in my drinking once i hit 21- the funny thing is i get really bad hangovers now- yet i didnt when i was younger- when i woke up after a long night of drinking and blacking out- i woke the next morning feeling like a champ- but now- i am in bed the whole day afterwards until i get up to drink more that night sat night. it sucks- i still blackout though if i drink heavily- i wish i was done with alcohol completely- cuz i become and angry drunk when i black out.
i still think its funny that alcohol and cigs are legal in general. soooo very much harmful to a persons body and psyche (i can vouch for that on the alchie) making people do extremely stupid and dangerous things,  yet w33d is still illegal.  

Rabid Lemming:
I don't know if this is common to everyone else here, but I personally noticed a steep decline in alcohol consumption for me and my friends after we were all 21.  Granted, the first few months of being 21 was a blur, but after that, it became common and hence less of a thrill.

I noticed a little of that with some of my buddies, but it was more due to other things that became a priority (e.g. internships, finding the right job, finishes classes so you can actually graduate, etc.).  Once you hit 21 or 22, you have to actually show up to work (versus just skipping class cause of hangovers) which is another thing that reduces consumption.

I think as with all things, it's based on who you hang out with.  For instance, my 2 jobs after college (finance, consulting) had a lot of boozers and so we continued with the boozefest.  Best memory was my VP deciding that we weren't drunk enough even though we had been drinking since dinner and it was 1 AM.  Consequently, he decided each person had to order 1 round of shots for everybody in addition to drinking their 'normal' drink.  There were 10 of us left.  Closed out the bar at 4 AM.  We all showed up to work at 9 AM.  All completely, filthy drunk.  My VP had to meet with the CIO of the company we were consulting at 10 AM.  I think I was 27 at the time.  I think we all sobered up by 5 PM...and then went to hit another bar...

My point being that I'm not sure how much age or the legality of drinking has to do with people drinking.  

I would think that you would probably get more drinking if they reduced the age limit.  Why?  Because I tend to think the reason you have so many 18-20 year olds drinking isn't because it's illegal for them to do so and it's 'cool'.  It's more for the fact that legal or not, they are in college and away from their parents who would kill them if they found them drunk.    

you know- the priority thing makes sense.
yet, getting hang overs nowadays, rather than not getting them back in the day has slowed me down too.  

You are who you hang out with..  this theory is so true.