Debate on lower drinking age bubbling up

JuJu · 08-14-2007, 08:16 PM

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

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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.
All states ban selling alcohol to minors, and nearly all prohibit possession, but many do not expressly bar minors from consuming it.

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.”
Choose Responsibility and its allies face a tough task convincing the public. In a Gallup poll released last week, 77 percent of Americans opposed lowering the drinking age to 18. But Seaman argued that it was the wisdom of the drinker that mattered, not his or her age.
“The problem we have is that since the 21-year-old age limit has been in effect, we have effectively written adults out of the equation, so that they really have nothing to do with young people who are drinking alcohol furtively, viewing alcohol as a forbidden fruit and drinking to excesses that I don’t think were evident back in the years before the law was passed,” said Seaman, who lived on the campuses of 12 U.S. and Canadian colleges while researching his book.
“If you lower that drinking age — make drinking no longer a forbidden fruit but rather something that younger adults do with older adults who have learned how to handle alcohol responsibly — then you reduce those behaviors rather than increase them,” he said.

Debate on lower drinking age bubbling up - Addictions - MSNBC.com

Ya think the national drinkin' age should be 18?

Homer · 08-14-2007, 08:34 PM

i can see 18 for those in the millitary but thats it , if you can go to war you should be able to have a beer.

UncleBacon · 08-14-2007, 08:35 PM

I agree with homer but I also think that 21 year olds have enough problem maturely drinking

UncleBacon · 08-14-2007, 08:36 PM

so until as a society we can handle it I think it should stay 21

GuesSAngel · 08-14-2007, 08:50 PM

yeah i think it should stay 21...and i agree with homer too...but to an extent.

All Else Failed · 08-14-2007, 09:14 PM

It should be 19.

JuJu · 08-14-2007, 09:28 PM

I figure 21 is just fine, but if ya enlist in the military, ya oughta be able to drink too.

JuJu · 08-14-2007, 10:00 PM

LOL, for every action there's a reaction, huh?

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California raises tax on sweetened alcoholic drinks
Article Launched: 08/14/2007 05:02:48 PM PDT

SACRAMENTO—California regulators voted Tuesday to raise taxes on flavored malt beverages, responding to arguments that the sweetened drinks contribute to underage drinking.

The state Board of Equalization voted 3-2 to tax brands such as Mike's Hard Lemonade and Zima as distilled spirits instead of as beer, which has a lower tax rate. That will increase the tax from 20 cents per gallon to $3.30 per gallon starting in July 2008, if the board can get the regulations in place by then.

Tax board Chair Betty Yee said she accepted the appeals from youth groups and The Marin Institute, an alcohol industry watchdog group, which argued that the so-called "alcopops" are flavored, packaged and marketed to appeal to young people.

"I think the overarching policy concern here was this is one element in dealing with underage drinking," Yee said in a telephone interview after the vote. The packaging and marketing are designed to "make it look like you're drinking something hip."

Michael Scippa, advocacy director at The Marin Institute, based in San Rafael, said California is following Maine in classifying the drinks as distilled spirits and other states are likely to do the same in an effort to fight underage drinking.

He called the flavored beverages "cocktails on training wheels. They bridge the gap between soda pop and alcoholic drinks because they don't taste like alcohol."
Gary Galanis, a vice president of Diageo North America, one of the world's largest alcohol manufacturers and the maker of Smirnoff, said raising the tax on flavored drinks won't deter underage drinking.

"It's access. It's about how kids get alcohol in their hands. This will do nothing to address that issue," Galanis said after the vote. "Using an emotional issue to help drive a tax discussion is just wrong."

Tax board member Bill Leonard said he opposed the decision because the flavored drinks have roughly the same alcohol content as beer, and there is no chemical difference between alcohol in distilled and malt beverages.
He said it makes no economic sense for manufacturers and distributors to target teenagers who can't legally buy the drinks. And if higher prices do deter underage drinkers, Leonard argued they will simply switch to beer and wine.

Tuesday's vote triggers a monthslong series of public hearings on the proposed regulations by the tax board and the Office of Administrative Law.
Marc Sorini, lead attorney for six companies that produce about 75 percent of flavored malt beverages, said it is too soon to know whether the industry will sue to block the tax change.

The state Legislature also may be required to decide which agency has jurisdiction over the beverages, the tax board or the California Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control, which like the federal government now classifies the flavored drinks as beer.

State Controller and tax board member John Chiang, who voted for the tax change, called on the Alcoholic Beverage Control Department to reclassify the drinks as distilled spirits to help fight alcohol abuse.

The higher tax rate would bring the state an estimated extra $30 million to $40 million a year if consumption remains the same, said tax board spokeswoman Anita Gore.
But Galanis, of the beverage-maker Diageo, said the higher cost will hurt retailers, restaurateurs and legal drinkers and cut consumption to the point there will be likely no net tax gain.

http://www.mercurynews.com/news/ci_6622315

TheUNZippee! · 08-14-2007, 10:07 PM

Up here in Canada it's 19. I think if you're old enough to die for your country, you're old enough to have a beer. Or 10. lol

I think the majority of 19 year olds are going to drink if they want to anyway, regardless of the law.

GuesSAngel · 08-14-2007, 11:34 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by TheUNZippee!

Up here in Canada it's 19. I think if you're old enough to die for your country, you're old enough to have a beer. Or 10. lol

I think the majority of 19 year olds are going to drink if they want to anyway, regardless of the law.

ah that's crap. I'm not willing to die for my country, so does that mean I shouldn't drink, and i'm old enough...

Boomer · 08-15-2007, 12:07 AM

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Originally Posted by UncleBacon

I agree with homer but I also think that 21 year olds have enough problem maturely drinking

I hear you man. Im still learning how to do it the RIGHT way. I can pound a bunch of the shit, but tha stuff I say sometimes is friggin stupid.

Suzie · 08-15-2007, 12:08 AM

I can only see bad things happening in the future if they lower the drinking age.

Boomer · 08-15-2007, 12:11 AM

Yup, younger pregnancy. A population burst would quickly insue. Bad for the long run. Plus they would be more apt to drink and drive, get their asses kicked and probaby OD on tha shit. But hey, Europe has no problems with it.

All Else Failed · 08-15-2007, 01:48 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Boomer

Yup, younger pregnancy. A population burst would quickly insue. Bad for the long run. Plus they would be more apt to drink and drive, get their asses kicked and probaby OD on tha shit. But hey, Europe has no problems with it.

Well, theres nothing stopping kids my age from getting alcohol, at all. I could get it from several sources right now if I wanted, and its the same with millions of other underage drinkers, yet all of these problems you list aren't on the scale you say they would be. Just make an observation.

08-15-2007, 01:52 AM

I don't think anyone is willing to die for their country. Its more like they are willing to die for their comrade or the guy in the fighting hole with them.

08-14-2007, 08:34 PM	#2
Homer Member Join Date: Jun 2005 Location: NJ Posts: 3,565 Tokenz: 546	Re: Debate on lower drinking age bubbling up i can see 18 for those in the millitary but thats it , if you can go to war you should be able to have a beer.

08-14-2007, 08:35 PM	#3
UncleBacon up yours you scum sucker Join Date: Feb 2005 Location: 7th layer of hell...I mean southern Md Posts: 874 Tokenz: 2,081	Re: Debate on lower drinking age bubbling up I agree with homer but I also think that 21 year olds have enough problem maturely drinking __________________ you look like a retarded slingblade

08-14-2007, 08:36 PM	#4
UncleBacon up yours you scum sucker Join Date: Feb 2005 Location: 7th layer of hell...I mean southern Md Posts: 874 Tokenz: 2,081	Re: Debate on lower drinking age bubbling up so until as a society we can handle it I think it should stay 21 __________________ you look like a retarded slingblade

08-14-2007, 08:50 PM	#5
GuesSAngel The newest, greatest mom in the world Staff Join Date: Jul 2005 Location: PA Posts: 14,780 Tokenz: 22,569	Re: Debate on lower drinking age bubbling up yeah i think it should stay 21...and i agree with homer too...but to an extent. __________________ Proud mommy...best thing I've ever been called

08-14-2007, 09:14 PM	#6
All Else Failed Member Join Date: Apr 2007 Posts: 6,451 Tokenz: 6,934	Re: Debate on lower drinking age bubbling up It should be 19.

08-14-2007, 09:28 PM	#7
JuJu Member Join Date: Jul 2007 Posts: 251 Tokenz: 460	Re: Debate on lower drinking age bubbling up I figure 21 is just fine, but if ya enlist in the military, ya oughta be able to drink too.

08-14-2007, 10:07 PM	#9
TheUNZippee! Junior Member Join Date: Aug 2007 Posts: 10 Tokenz: 271	Re: Debate on lower drinking age bubbling up Up here in Canada it's 19. I think if you're old enough to die for your country, you're old enough to have a beer. Or 10. lol I think the majority of 19 year olds are going to drink if they want to anyway, regardless of the law. __________________ Turbo made me cum. Here.

08-15-2007, 12:08 AM	#12
Suzie V.I.P User Join Date: Mar 2007 Posts: 6,614	Re: Debate on lower drinking age bubbling up I can only see bad things happening in the future if they lower the drinking age.

08-15-2007, 12:11 AM	#13
Boomer Member Join Date: Feb 2007 Location: Houston Texas Posts: 13,946 Tokenz: 12,511	Re: Debate on lower drinking age bubbling up Yup, younger pregnancy. A population burst would quickly insue. Bad for the long run. Plus they would be more apt to drink and drive, get their asses kicked and probaby OD on tha shit. But hey, Europe has no problems with it. __________________

08-15-2007, 01:52 AM	#15
NightWarrior Guest Posts: n/a Tokenz: 0 [Check]	Re: Debate on lower drinking age bubbling up I don't think anyone is willing to die for their country. Its more like they are willing to die for their comrade or the guy in the fighting hole with them.

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