Lowering Drinking Age Will Not Solve Binge Drinking

[FrankRep]

Lowering Drinking Age Will Not Solve Binge Drinking


Written by John Fisher (John Birch Society (http://www.jbs.org/))
15 September 2008


Some 120 university presidents and chancellors have signed on to a proposal to reduce the legal drinking age in the U.S. to 18 years old.

The college and university presidents claim the federal minimum drinking age of 21 has contributed to an epidemic of binge drinking, as well as other excessive, unhealthy drinking habits on their campuses.

According to a commentary by Radley Balko (http://www.foxnews.com/printer_friendly_story/0,3566,410283,00.html) on FoxNews.com, “Prohibitions have always provoked over-indulgence.”

“Those of us who have attended college over the last 25 years can certainly attest to the fact that the law has done nothing to diminish freshman and sophomore access to alcohol. It has only pushed underage consumption underground....”

The reasoning for lowering the drinking age goes like this: “The U.S. has the highest minimum drinking age in the world (save for countries where it's forbidden entirely). In countries with a low or no national minimum drinking age, teens are introduced to alcohol gradually, moderately, and under the supervision of their parents.”

“U.S. teens, on the other hand, tend to first try alcohol in unsupervised environments — in cars, motels, or outdoor settings in high school, or in dorm rooms, fraternity parties, or house parties when they leave home to go to college. During alcohol prohibition, we saw how adults who imbibed under such conditions reacted — they drank way too much, way too fast. It shouldn't be surprising that teens react in much the same way.”

Balko doesn’t know his facts. Binge drinking is a problem in other countries. In Britain (http://wenatcheeworld.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080902/OP03/709029920/-1/OP) where youth can drink alcohol with their meals in pubs at 16 years old, 53,844 people under 25 were admitted to English hospitals in the last year due to alcohol-related trouble. In Canada where the drinking age is 18 or 19 depending on the province, the recent death (http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/story.html?id=1c4cea81-32ba-4f1d-8c58-4e4e745e5690) of a 20-year-old man serves as a reminder to youth of the dangers of binge drinking.

Lowering the drinking age will just make alcohol that much more readily available to younger teens while binge drinking will continue to be a problem on university campuses. University presidents, who want the legal drinking age reduced, hope to shift the blame for alcohol abuse to students and away from their institutions.

Alcohol consumption increased many fold after the repeal of prohibition and particularly as a result of World War II. Past history and the experience of other countries shows that lowering the drinking age won’t increase responsible drinking – it just increases the amount of drinking.


Dr. John Fisher teaches communications and researches in the area of mass media and political decision making.


SOURCE:
http://www.jbs.org/index.php/jbs-news-feed/2740-lowering-drinking-age-will-not-solve-binge-drinking

[LibertiORDeth]

Either way an adult should have the right to drink...

[MRoCkEd]

Either way an adult should have the right to drink...
and smoke rocks

[James Madison]

If I can die for my country I can go to the bar and have a beer. Nuff said.

[Bruno]

If I can die for my country I can go to the bar and have a beer. Nuff said.

Raise the draft/enlistment age, or lower the drinking age. One or the other.

fyi - that was a never-before-used blackmail tactic that caused the states to go to 21 nationally. Reagan threated to withhold state highway funds if they didn't comply.

[James Madison]

Raise the draft/enlistment age, or lower the drinking age. One or the other.

fyi - that was a never-before-used blackmail tactic that caused the states to go to 21 nationally. Reagan threated to withhold state highway funds if they didn't comply.

Yep. I'd have told em to stuff it and secede from the Union, but that's just me.:D

Seriously though, the people who make these laws know damn well what the implications are; the drug laws in this country exist as a way to further neutralize the once proud American public. Keep em stupid and consumed with worldly pleasures like sex and alcohol...that's the plan. In fact, the people will be so completely dumbed-down they'll practically beg to be slaves to the state. There you go.

[Theocrat]

Lowering Drinking Age Will Not Solve Binge Drinking


Written by John Fisher (John Birch Society (http://www.jbs.org/))
15 September 2008


Some 120 university presidents and chancellors have signed on to a proposal to reduce the legal drinking age in the U.S. to 18 years old.

The college and university presidents claim the federal minimum drinking age of 21 has contributed to an epidemic of binge drinking, as well as other excessive, unhealthy drinking habits on their campuses.

According to a commentary by Radley Balko (http://www.foxnews.com/printer_friendly_story/0,3566,410283,00.html) on FoxNews.com, “Prohibitions have always provoked over-indulgence.”

“Those of us who have attended college over the last 25 years can certainly attest to the fact that the law has done nothing to diminish freshman and sophomore access to alcohol. It has only pushed underage consumption underground....”

The reasoning for lowering the drinking age goes like this: “The U.S. has the highest minimum drinking age in the world (save for countries where it's forbidden entirely). In countries with a low or no national minimum drinking age, teens are introduced to alcohol gradually, moderately, and under the supervision of their parents.”

“U.S. teens, on the other hand, tend to first try alcohol in unsupervised environments — in cars, motels, or outdoor settings in high school, or in dorm rooms, fraternity parties, or house parties when they leave home to go to college. During alcohol prohibition, we saw how adults who imbibed under such conditions reacted — they drank way too much, way too fast. It shouldn't be surprising that teens react in much the same way.”

Balko doesn’t know his facts. Binge drinking is a problem in other countries. In Britain (http://wenatcheeworld.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080902/OP03/709029920/-1/OP) where youth can drink alcohol with their meals in pubs at 16 years old, 53,844 people under 25 were admitted to English hospitals in the last year due to alcohol-related trouble. In Canada where the drinking age is 18 or 19 depending on the province, the recent death (http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/story.html?id=1c4cea81-32ba-4f1d-8c58-4e4e745e5690) of a 20-year-old man serves as a reminder to youth of the dangers of binge drinking.

Lowering the drinking age will just make alcohol that much more readily available to younger teens while binge drinking will continue to be a problem on university campuses. University presidents, who want the legal drinking age reduced, hope to shift the blame for alcohol abuse to students and away from their institutions.

Alcohol consumption increased many fold after the repeal of prohibition and particularly as a result of World War II. Past history and the experience of other countries shows that lowering the drinking age won’t increase responsible drinking – it just increases the amount of drinking.


Dr. John Fisher teaches communications and researches in the area of mass media and political decision making.


SOURCE:
http://www.jbs.org/index.php/jbs-news-feed/2740-lowering-drinking-age-will-not-solve-binge-drinking

That's a great article, and thanks for posting it. I agree that lowering the drinking age will not stop binge drinking because binge drinking is a habitual problem or lifestyle. Age is really irrelevant. It comes from the lack of moderation and responsibility to enjoy an alcoholic beverage due to several social factors, such as desires to "enjoy the moment" during a party, social, etc., and alleviating stress and/or depression in life.

Those behaviors need to be nurtured and honed by familial/community intervention and personal education and responsibility. Having the State impose an age limit on drinking a beverage is about as effective as regulating the age of when a child can eat with a fork.

[dannno]

Wow.. he had me convinced with all those comparative statistics :rolleyes: NOT!! ;):D


The argument is that when teens do get alcohol, they try and get as drunk as possible because they don't know when they're going to be able to obtain alcohol again..or because it's so hard to get they want to get their drunkenness out of it. Then somebody else has some next weekend so they drink that cause it's free..

I was the opposite, I liked to keep my alcohol around so I'd always have some.. but I was not apart of the majority in that regard.

Either way, when alcohol is legal for someone, it is exciting at first and quickly becomes "not that big a deal" after a few months. A similar type of excitement exists for those who drink illegally, so it's better to lower the age to 18.

[zach]

I don't get that if Regan changed it with some sort of tax thing, and he's not the President anymore, then can't the current President redo that thing?

:?

[satchelmcqueen]

seems like a good argument for the other drugs to.


oh wait, thats just stupid.

[Ozwest]

[quote=James Madison;1692835]If I can die for my country I can go to the bar and have a beer. Nuff said.[/quot

Too right!

[Standing Like A Rock]

If I can die for my country I can go to the bar and have a beer. Nuff said.

Too right!

we are three who agree

[The_Orlonater]

I'm 15, and have had a few beers. I'm not addicted, and I don't crave for more.

It's people themselves that need to take control of themselves.

Nuff' said.

[brandon]

and smoke rocks

ROFL!!


That's a great article,
Please tell me you are being sarcastic. Even if you agree with his thesis, the article is still terribly written and lacks a persuasive argument.

Wow.. he had me convinced with all those comparative statistics :rolleyes: NOT!! ;):D



+1000

[Ozwest]

I'm 15, and have had a few beers. I'm not addicted, and I don't crave for more.

It's people themselves that need to take control of themselves.

Nuff' said.

I had my first drinks at the age of 14 . Most parents did the same when they were your age.

Chill out, and get laid. Gotta get your priorities right!

When I was 14, I had almost no control.

One word of advice. Don't listen to crap.

Respect Women.

[gls]

I thought the JBS was a freedom-oriented organization? So much for principles I suppose.

[FrankRep]

I thought the JBS was a freedom-oriented organization? So much for principles I suppose.

He's just saying that lowering the drinking age will not solve Binge Drinking. That is all.

This has nothing to do with the law of making the drinking age lower. Great, lower the drinking age, that's fine.

Understand?

[James Madison]

[QUOTE=Theocrat;1692855]That's a great article, and thanks for posting it. I agree that lowering the drinking age will not stop binge drinking because binge drinking is a habitual problem or lifestyle.
QUOTE]

I hope you're not serious. My parents started giving me alcohol when I was eight years old in a supervised, controlled environment. Eleven years later I look at all the idiots around me at the frat parties getting hammered at just laugh. And every single one of them I have talked to says the same thing: "I wanted to see what it was like but my parents wouldn't let me...now that I'm on my own I can get shit-faced every weekend. Fuck Yeah!" I will say, however, that the problem isn't really the laws as it is the culture the laws have created. How would you go about undoing the laws and the culture as well? I'm not so sure it'd be realistic, but in the end it comes down to personal responsibility. I don't wanna get drunk but as a legal adult you have every right to as long as you bring no harm upon me.

[FrankRep]

My parents started giving me alcohol when I was eight years old in a supervised, controlled environment.

Parental guidance and supervision will help solve the problem with Binge Drinking.


Lowering the drinking age, by itself, isn't the magic solution.

[Theocrat]

[QUOTE=Theocrat;1692855]That's a great article, and thanks for posting it. I agree that lowering the drinking age will not stop binge drinking because binge drinking is a habitual problem or lifestyle.
QUOTE]

I hope you're not serious. My parents started giving me alcohol when I was eight years old in a supervised, controlled environment. Eleven years later I look at all the idiots around me at the frat parties getting hammered at just laugh. And every single one of them I have talked to says the same thing: "I wanted to see what it was like but my parents wouldn't let me...now that I'm on my own I can get shit-faced every weekend. Fuck Yeah!" I will say, however, that the problem isn't really the laws as it is the culture the laws have created. How would you go about undoing the laws and the culture as well? I'm not so sure it'd be realistic, but in the end it comes down to personal responsibility. I don't wanna get drunk but as a legal adult you have every right to as long as you bring no harm upon me.

I'm not sure what your disagreement is with my post. It seems like we're saying similar things. Please clarify.

[Ozwest]

Perhaps all teenagers shuld be sent to Alcatraz.

[James Madison]

[QUOTE=James Madison;1693176]

I'm not sure what your disagreement is with my post. It seems like we're saying similar things. Please clarify.

I agree with your analysis that its a cultural problem, but I thought the article was pretty much a waist of two minutes.

[Ozwest]

Give it a Rest.

I have no time for hypocricy.

[richardfortherepublic]

If I am 18, and I make $10,000 in a 6 month period, work 65 hours some weeks, and $6,000 of it goes to the federal government... and that same government tells me, a legal adult, that I am not mature enough to drink.... is that not tyrannical?

[kojirodensetsu]

Whether or not it helps stop excessive drinking doesn't matter. When you're an adult you should be able to make your own decisions. And currently from your adult years of 18-20 you cannot. Drinking age should be lowered to 18.

[JosephTheLibertarian]

We should eliminate the minimum drinking age and we should get rid of the "liquor" license and we can "fill" the gap in lost revenue by eliminating the regulatory bodies in whichever state we're talking about.

[FrankRep]

Whether or not it helps stop excessive drinking doesn't matter. When you're an adult you should be able to make your own decisions. And currently from your adult years of 18-20 you cannot. Drinking age should be lowered to 18.

The article isn't arguing against lowering the drinking age.

[Trance Dance Master]

Respect Women.
Respect is something that is earned. You don't just get it automatically based on gender.

[FindLiberty]

The JBS can keep their solutions in their own back yard and butt out of family choices involving parents and their kids.

It's my major gripe with the JBS in a nutshell: they're not pro-liberty or pro-freedom. In fact you might call them blind and stupid when it comes to their high and mighty moral mission items.

It's sad to see how sincere they are in their foolishness, coming out and spewing against God given personal responsibility and consentual adult freedoms (e.g., abortion, prostitution, drinking and drug use). They fly right off the chart with their automatic faith in harsh laws and complete trust in the state, regardless of facts, history or principle. What a bunch of maroons. Suddenly they have complete faith that governmental central planning can somehow apply approved moral codes and coerce approved lifestyle upon everyone, without ever acknowledging the obvious unintended consequences that usually make the (undesirable) behavior worse than ever.

[Zolah]

I'm not sure what your disagreement is with my post. It seems like we're saying similar things. Please clarify.

I agree with your post too, parental responsibility in teaching personal responsibility develops healthy behaviour and attitudes towards alcohol, I was encouraged to drink when I was young and realised that drinking wasn't a big deal, unlike many of my friends with strict parents who had completely different attitudes towards alcohol by the time we're the age of 12-13, i.e they do not drink responsibily, they binge drink and crash hard, and that's the problem. And btw, here in UK, Scotland especially, there are 12-13 year old alcoholics, the binge drinking problem here is huge, and some people are talking about actually raising the legal age here. I can guarantee you though, raising or lowering the legal age will have zero effect on binge drinking, but encouraging parents to teach personal responsibility will.

But, and I think this is what the other guy was getting at too, I disagree with you when you say the article is good, and that's all I disagree with, think it's the same for the other guy too, I thought the article was rubbish :p

And from an outsider perspective by the way, I've always thought the legal age of drinking in America being 21 was weird, to me it seems like a serious lapse in common sense - that you can leave school, buy a house, get married, have kids and serve your country in the military at age 18...but can't buy a beer in a bar...it won't affect binge drinking statistics for better or for worse, not in the slightest, but I think it makes more sense for the legal age of drinking to be 18, from an outsider perspective at least.

[BuddyRey]

No offense to the original poster, but this article = the ineffectual fearmongering of "conservative" busybodies.

[Fox McCloud]

Those behaviors need to be nurtured and honed by familial/community intervention and personal education and responsibility. Having the State impose an age limit on drinking a beverage is about as effective as regulating the age of when a child can eat with a fork.

Precisely; take for example Germany, which, once upon a time didn't have a drinking age at all. Over there beer is just thought of as something like pop; you drink it because you like and not because you want to get drunk, get caught up in the social moment, etc (though this definitely does happen over there, just not as much). Because they view it differently (and thus likely to talk/teach about it differently, whether intentional or not) it has an entirely different effect on society.

[drpiotrowski]

"University presidents, who want the legal drinking age reduced, hope to shift the blame for alcohol abuse to students and away from their institutions."

Or, perhaps, people are just smart enough to realize that once a legal adult, you get all the responsibilities of an adult. If you have all the responsibilities of an adult, you must, then, get all the rights. It naturally follows.

This whole "21 drinking age" has always been stupid. It will continue to be stupid as long as it exists.

PS
I'm over 21 years old. I have nothing to gain, either way. Blaming 'University Presidents' is the most preposterous thing I've heard in a while. Neo-cons can't find originality anywhere, these days.

[Truth Warrior]

Lowering Voting Age Will Not Solve Binge Voting. ;)

[FindLiberty]

No offense to the original poster, but this article = the ineffectual fearmongering of "conservative" busybodies.

Thank you!

[Zippyjuan]

Some people who favor a lower drinking age cite the lower drinking ages and less social stigma on drinking in countries like Britain or Germany. But they ignore the fact that both countries have larger problems with adult alcoholism than we do. Alcoholism in Russia is a major contributor to decreases in life expectancy there.

[James Madison]

Some people who favor a lower drinking age cite the lower drinking ages and less social stigma on drinking in countries like Britain or Germany. But they ignore the fact that both countries have larger problems with adult alcoholism than we do. Alcoholism in Russia is a major contributor to decreases in life expectancy there.

You're missing the point. If you're gonna tell me that I can die for my country, kill for my country, vote, live on my own, get married, buy lottery tickets, be recognized by the state as a legal adult, go to the strip-club, pay someone for sex, smoke, be executed, and be completely self-sufficient but can't go to the bar after a stressful day and have beer then I would say you're (not you personally) are an enemy of freedom.

[revolutionist]

Some people who favor a lower drinking age cite the lower drinking ages and less social stigma on drinking in countries like Britain or Germany. But they ignore the fact that both countries have larger problems with adult alcoholism than we do. Alcoholism in Russia is a major contributor to decreases in life expectancy there.


It wasn't always that way, actually. The trend of higher alcoholism in Germany and the rest of Europe is a recent development. The biggest blame is American Influence, so the 21 drinking age that is causing American teenagers to go wild is also spreading to Europe through the media.

[kojirodensetsu]

The article isn't arguing against lowering the drinking age.
I know. I was just stating that the article doesn't matter at all. tones

[mediahasyou]

That could be. But dismantling drinking restrictions will solve the coercion problem. People have self-ownership. Dont make them your slave. Dont let someone make you theres: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muHg86Mys7I