excreationist

That only involves them risking their own lives (and perhaps saving the lives of others) - it theoretically doesn't increase the death-rate of citizens who don't want to participate. On the other hand, those who have a lot of alcohol can affect sober people through drunk-driving or domestic violence, etc.

It is also alcohol-related violence and other ways that alcoholics can negatively affect other people (like their children, etc)

Apparently if the drinking age is lowered then there would be more long-term alcoholics.... people are talking about minimizing the problem of alcohol... it can't be eliminated though, as prohibition in the 1920's showed.

SimplyAtheistic

True, but the question is maturity, not the effects of an ill decision.

Same goes for a legal drinker, teenagers are actually less prone to this because they drink more in the party scene just to have fun.

Alcoholism will develop at 21 just as easily at 18, and taking 3 years from that disease won't do much. That is like saying "If we kill only people 18 and younger instead of 25 and younge, we will have more people" Crude analogy, but I hope you see where I am going with this.
Jake
Jake

excreationist

I sort of agree with you, though many in this thread would disagree with you. BTW, lunachick was saying that people who are a couple years younger than the legal age can sometimes buy alcohol and go to bars... so if the legal age is 18, some 17 or 16 year olds would be able to get away with buying alcohol - and giving it to their younger friends. If the age was 21 and 18-20 year olds bought some alcohol sometimes, there would probably be less alcohol consumed by young teenagers due to less people close to their age who'd want to buy it for them... (maybe their reasoning goes something like that)
But anyway, I don't strongly disagree with you since I don't have any good evidence.

BTW, earlier, near the middle of page 2, I asked you about recreational driving. The problem is that it seems hard to define what it is exactly and also hard to determine whether someone is guilty of it. On the other hand, things like outlawing driving altogether, or having speed limits, or having legal drinking ages, etc, are easy to understand and it is fairly easy to determine whether someone is guilty of the offence.

keyser_soze

For drinking? A good age would be 22. The closer you are to an age to do something, the less objective you are towards it. When you get to college, you may change your mind about the drinking age entirely. You would be surprised how ridiculous kids get in college while doing the bar thing and binge drinking. It's a tough call. You can't really take the individual maturity of a person in mind. You may do fine with consumption, but we can't very well design a law that works by individual basis. That's the point of an arbitrary line. We put the line where the cost/benefits ratio is the highest we can get it, and then plant it. Is 21 a good line? It's probably the best we can do under the circumstances. I have friends in sweden who drink at 14, and I believe their state age requirements are either non existent, or very young. But each culture is different. If we changed our culture, and started allowing wine or beer with meals from say age 10 or so(like a lot of germans I know), then the alcoholism rate would probably drop and your question would be moot. But our culture is the way it is...and under it's current design, the drinking age set to 21 has the best cost ratio. We either have to ease up the restrictions all the way(not place any moral or judicial penalties from say age 8 or 10), or restrict the hell out of it until the majority maturity age. I find both to be acceptable choices, as they work in different communities. You have to consider so many variables, that it's not easy to do. Personally, I find americans very immature at 18...but I know a lot of people from europe and asia, where a lot of people are already in adulthood by 16. Under our "young forever" culture, I can't think of an alternative to the 21 age that would yield better numbers for fatalities.

NHGH

OK, I suppose I should probably just let this thread die (or not); frankly, I'm undecided on the question of lowering the drinking age. (And just for the record, I'm 32 years old, so it's not my ox being gored here.) But I just had to comment on the following exchange:

I don't see anything fallacious in JakeJohnson's argument here. No way, no how was it a strawman.

A strawman would have been something along the lines of: "keyser_soze's insistence that we prohibit people from driving without proper justification is an unconscionable attack on our freedoms. Since we all want our freedoms respected, we must permit people to drive where and when they please."

JakeJohnson's argument, if I followed it correctly, was something more along the lines of a reductio ad absurdum: "If we tip the balance between 'freedom' and 'safety' as far to the 'safety' side as keyser_soze does, it would follow as a consequence that we ought to outlaw recreational driving, in order to avoid the possible loss of life in traffic accidents stemming from these unnecessary trips. But this would plainly be an unconscionable restriction on our freedoms; therefore we ought not to emphasize 'safety' over 'freedom' as heavily as keyser_soze does."

Admittedly, the argument gets a bit murky here, since it's not entirely clear just what keyser_soze thinks the proper balance should be, though obviously he leans more to the "safety" side than JakeJohnson does. I do think, though, that in light of keyser_soze's drawing the distinction that "...[W]e REQUIRE the ability to move from one place to another. We only WANT to drink." JakeJohnson was perfectly justified in pressing the point.

Anyway, that's all I have to say on this subject (at least for now). Like I said, I'm ambivalent on the issue of whether or not we should lower the drinking age. I just don't think that JakeJohnson deserved to be lectured on "stick[ing] to proper debating style" when his argument was perfectly reasonable. (Of course, whether he sets the safety/freedom balance too far in the direction of freedom is a separate--and much less clear cut--question).

SimplyAtheistic

This is what I was trying to get out of you, and since you think it should be 22 we have a clear standpoint. I personally think that 18 would be the best age, and I have given my reasons, so I guess we can agree to disagree. But about the part where "kids would try and get away with it more if it was 18". Well, kids will try and get away with anything if it isn't allowed, no matter what age.
Jake

keyser_soze

On this we can fully agree.

keyser_soze

Yes, you are probably right, but as you'll read the original thread that this one spun off from, and the fine print of "take my statements with a grain of salt because I'm exceedingly tired(I was awake about 27 hours at that point)" you will find that I probably had MORE than that single failure of contention....But your assessment is generally correct, that is more the argument, and yes, I lean more towards the common safety.

BioBeing

Young drivers are more likely to have accidents even while sober than "older" drivers. Insurance premiums for under 25's are steep, and good luck getting a rental car.

So my solution is to allow drinking at age 18 and driving at age 25. Questions?

Seriously: I am of the view that once a person is legally considered an adult, then one has a hard job regulating what they do. For most intents and purposes 18 happens to be that cutoff age in our society. They have finished high school, they can fight, they can vote, they can smoke, get married etc. In my view it is hypocritical of society to try and prevent them from drinking at this age. Note: I would also not let them drive till this age also.

For the record, I am 35 and grew up in England, where we could drink at 18 and start to learn to drive (accompanied) at 17.

keyser_soze

1. We got into the danger of young people driving in the other thread.
2. Different cultures....and driving area. Remember the old adage, "Americans think 100 years is a long time, and the Brits think 100 miles is a long way."

There are really only two viable options for maximum safety. Move the driving age up 1 year, move the drinking age up 2. Screw "old enough for the service"...we haven't had a draft in 30 years, and I doubt we'll have another. It never should have happened in the first place. We don't BELONG in foreign wars like Vietnam, unless our position is critical, and we have more than enough VOLUNTARY servicemen to do the job. The second option is to totally remove drinking restrictions, a la "Germany and Sweden, etc..." and try to get americans to grow up earlier. Americans don't mature until they're nearly 40...it's freaking obnoxious. WTF?

Everyone forgets option 3....Leave it as is. It would take such a monumental effort (which americans aren't willing to do) to move this thing around that it will never happen. Meantime, get three years older and do it legally. No one obeys the blue laws here anyway.