Monday, July 13, 2009

Drinking Age?

As a legal drinker in the USA I would like to share my opinions on the american drinking age and the idea of a drinking age in general.

For starters I believe that the American drinking age is too high. College towns in the country have too many cops looking for underage drinkers when they should be more concerned with things like theft and drunk driving. For this reason I believe that if the USA should have a drinking age it should be changed to 19. This age is the same as canada, and would allow almost all people out of high school to drink. After high school is the time when the majority of people start drinking the most (many also drink in high school, as did I. But after HS drinking tends to increase, not in a bad way though). They say college is a time for experimenting, not learning about how to avoid cops for something that is non-violent and not dangerous (if done intelligently, like everything) am I right?

My true opinion though is that drinking ages should not exist. True aboloshing the drinking age abruptly would lead to a lot of young people drinking that should not but that would subside quickly. Insted people would learn about drinking from their parents and most would learn how to drink responsibly at an early age. They would learn what "drunk" is and would KNOW that driving in that condition is a poor choice...before they learn to drive and find out the hard way. Early learning is when things 'stick' best, that has been proven, so why not apply that to alcohol as well?

Underage drinking will happen, and cannot be stopped. To a point it is bad and should not happen but most of the time it is completely fine. In many european countries there is no drinking age and children are allowed to drink wine from when they are very young. Consumption of alcohol is not damaging to the body if done in moderation and thus when people learn what moderation is early in life they become much smarter drinkers. This is why I find the system flawed and plea for change to save the future from having my tax dollers go to prevent something that does no harm to anyone. Why can someone die because of a country and not have a beer before they do it?

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