Should the drinking age be lowered?
An increasing number of college officials are arguing that current drinking laws have failed. Instead of keeping students away from alcohol, they argue, the laws simply drive underage drinking underground and toward unsafe extremes.
Leading the debate for change is John M. McCardell, Jr., president emeritus of Vermont's Middlebury College, who proposes rolling back the legal drinking age from 21 to 18 after granting "drinking licenses" to those who complete an extensive alcohol education program.
When I was just starting college and driving with friends to Ohio to pretend to get drunk on 3.2 beer, I had one answer. Now that I'm an onery old coot who worries that the kid in the car behind me might have been drinking, I have a different one. What you see depends on where you stand. Got a problem with that?
Ah, near-beer memories. Who knew that would be good practice for O'Doul's?
Comments
Ohio was 18 for beer and wine back in my day, and WI was 18 for everything - I am still here to tell about it.
Too much nanny state going on in regards to drinking ages.
It also creates a forbidden fruit air about it by creating this arbitrary drinking age - a problem they don't seem to have in Europe where the ages are lower.
I grew up in Richmond, a few miles from the Ohio state line. My older brothers and sister would cross over into New Paris and have a few beers after they turned 18. (Ohio was forced by the feds to go up to 21 a few years before I turned 18). Consequently, I had a hard time taking the drinking restriction seriously between 18 and 21.
The drinking education to get a drinking license probably wouldn't hurt, but I doubt it would help very much. It would probably be ham-fisted, exaggerate the dangers of drinking, and be sneered at by 18 to 21 year olds.
In any case, if kids are old enough to make decisions about voting, enlisting, and smoking; they're probably old enough to make decisions about drinking.