theirs my 2 cents
ps i live in Israel and the drinking age is 18 there

I am 18 and I feel it should be kept at 21.

Somebody knows better than you what’s good for you. Just not you.

THIS is the creeping fascism everyone should be afraid of.

You can own a gun at 16

You can join the Armed forces at 18 or 17 with parentla consent.

You can Drive a car at 16.

You can have sex at 18.

You can drink alcohol at 21.

So you’d be able to drive a car legally for 5 years before having a beer legally.

Ever noticed that youngsters who drink tend to screw up and come home with sick down their fronts? Incapable?

And that’s them walking.

Yet it is seens as being a good move to be able to get drunk and have the car so habituated into their world view that they’ll automatically try to drive.

Also you can own a gun and legally shoot people, under certain circumstances, for 2 years before you can have sex?

The US is seriously screwy.

“Hey, let’s legalize murder and rape while we’re at it since ‘some people do it anyways.’
What a stupid reason.”

What a stupid comment. Murder and rape are crimes against others; putting a forbidden substance into your body hurts nobody but you. You don’t see the difference?

Sigh wrote:

“How about instead we raise our children better and teach them virtue?”

Right, how about WE do that and not the legislative branch of the government? While we’re teaching them ‘virtue’ (whatever you happen to mean by that), maybe we could also give them enough factual information about drugs and alcohol that they won’t be tantalized by the prospect of trying to find a good time in a forbidden bottle… as opposed to the lies and distortions that we currently expect kids to believe, or the total information blackout on the subject that many parents hand them.

First they told me about Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy, Jesus, and the Boogy Man… then they told me that I’d ruin my life if I smoked pot.

the drinking age should definitely be lowered, though. if you get a DWI when you’re under-age, you get slapped with a much larger penalty than if you’re of age. also, your blood alcohol level has to be less than 0.01, so you’re screwed if you rinse with f*cking listerine. when you’re of age, you’ll get slapped with a fine, get your license revoked for a while, have to serve probation (the same as if you’re underage), but your blood alcohol level has to be below 0.08. my buddy got f-ed the other day, of course it was his fault for driving like a dick and drinking, but he had like A beer and they took him in under false pretenses. if the drinking age is lowered, i think some teenagers will avoid the binge drinking and learn some discipline before they get slapped with a huge legal liability. i don’t know, it makes more sense. i think the more you limit someone from doing something the more they just want to do it.

You can lose your license if you abuse it, no matter your age. DWI, DUI, Public Intoxication etc.

the only thing lowering the age limit will do is find out who has a drinking problem sooner

I see a lot of comments from people who assume that lowering the drinking age will somehow magically result in more people drinking. Are you folks for real? User DOJ wrote a comment recommending that we lower the drinking age a year at a time, “to lessen the shock of three years worth of people diving in at once”. This is not a view that is in touch with reality. Do you actually believe that the current law against drinking before you’re 21 stops 20-year-olds, 19-year-olds, or 18-year-olds? All it does is keep them out of bars and liquor stores, unless they happen to have a convincing-enough fake ID, or they happen to be frequenting one of the many establishments that are somewhat lax on carding people who aren’t obviously too young.

“Congress should at least remove their blackmail that virtually requires states to have the law at 21 to get their full highway fund money. Letting states decide what they want is the proper federalist answer.”

Hear, hear to your “at least”.

I see a lot of people giving opinions about what the legal age for drinking should be, but I think legislating a legal age at all is absurd and offensive… much more so when that age is above the age of majority. The government should not be legislating personal morality to adults, nor should the government be co-opting the role that belongs to parents.

By “legislating personal morality” I mean criminalizing victimless actions and writing laws designed to protect adults from themselves. We already have laws against driving while intoxicated, so we don’t need laws against getting intoxicated, an act which in and of itself puts nobody at risk but the intoxicated person. ALL recreational drugs should be legal for adults to use as they see fit… prohibition didn’t work with alcohol and it doesn’t work with marijuana, cocaine, heroin, LSD, ecstasy, or any other recreational substance. All the statistics show that the “War on Drugs” that began in the Reagan administration has been a massive and very costly failure, not unlike the failed war on alcohol that we waged from 1920 to 1933.

Some Mrs. Grundy type is bound to reply to this with some outraged comments about how drug addicts steal and rob to get money for drugs, and then go on to claim that decriminalizing drugs would result in a tidal wave of such lawlessness. The fact of the matter, however, is that the price of recreational drugs is artificially high (extremely so) precisely because they are illegal. If the cost of heroin actually reflected the cost of producing it, transporting it, and retailing it, a junkie would be able to get his daily fix for around fifty cents, and thus would have no need to steal or rob in order to satisfy his jones. Remove the laws against sales, possession, and use, and you remove the artificially high cost. Remove the artificially high cost, and you remove the impetus to steal.

Mrs. Grundy will also stridently point out that legalizing all drugs would result in a huge rise in drug use, and in drug overdoses. The opposite is true… remove the taboo factor, and drug use will go down, not up. Supply drug enthusiasts with pharmaceutical quality product that does not vary wildly in strength and purity the way street drugs do, and overdoses (along with other health problems induced by drug use) will plummet.

As for alcohol specifically… personally, I plan on giving my 16-month-old son a small glass of wine or beer with his dinner on a regular basis, starting when he’s about ten years old. I want him to have no curiosity on the subject of booze, and I want him to be familiar enough with the effects that he won’t overdo it when he’s older in some futile search for a good time. Forbidden fruit has a powerful allure, especially for kids.

Also, greatly increase the penalties for drunk driving in the same legislation that lowers the drinking age.

It’s obviously stupid, and it gives young people a strong foundation of distrust of government.

I don’t get it.

It is a good stress reliever for some college students…

Conversely, and this will get me drug into the street and shot, we could raise the minimum age for ‘responsible activities’ (drinking, marriage, etc.) to 22 or 23. That gives enough time for students to get a 4 year degree before being allowed to drink. I also believe that anyone should be allowed inside of bars as a designated driver and simply not served alcohol.

To some degree I would prefer to have the drinking age lowered to 16 but have the driving age raised to 18. I would also like to have a driving age cutoff or mandatory proficiency exams after a particular age. Any FARK reader sees crashes into farmers’ markets almost as much as DUI.

Then the other part of me says we’ve already got enough idiots driving drunk and killing people on the road at 21, why would you ever lower it?

Here’s an idea…let’s decriminalize marijuana. That way, you get rid of bar fights, driving drunk, most domestic violence, etc. There worst thing you’d have to deal with then is a severe case of the munchies.

I bought beer when I was 18 and ended up quit drinking by my 20′s. We were not a stupid as they are now.

Now days the drinking and driving is a problem. Also the drinking till you puke and pass out is just stupid.

The mental problems with youth now days is the problem. They act like they are 14 till they are almost 30.

If they can join the army, they should be able to drink a beer.

Military age: 21
Drinkin’ age: 21
Votin’ age: 21
Smokin’ legalized MJ age: 21

As our life expectancy is extended it only makes sense to tweak these upwards. If 50 is the new 40 (or whatever), then let’s make 21 the new 18.

In the US kids can drive at 16, sometimes younger. The very first time they can get drunk (legally), they will have car keys in their hands, and no personal experience warning them that they are in no condition to drive.

In the States there is such an alcoholism problem, and I’m sure it’s because alcohol is such a taboo. Remove the taboo and you remove the appeal!

As for your second point about choosing one, well that’s the most absurdly moronic thing I’ve heard all day that doesn’t have to do with McCain vs Obama.

As someone who has lived in the US, where you can drive before you can drink, and Europe, where people often start to drink before learning to drive, I think the answer is to separate the two completely. Give everyone in the US above 18 a choice: a license to drink, or a license to drive. No one should legally be able to do both.

Most other nations don’t have the binge drinking problems the US does with teenages. Here is it taboo, so it must be good- just like sex. In Canada, etc, alcohol is just alcohol.

When I lived in the Dominican Republic they’d sell or serve anyone who was old enough to ask for and pay for a drink- no child binge drinkers there, though I did sometimes see a kid having a beer with dinner with their parents or a kid buying beer with some groceries at the market as part of the family’s daily shopping.