Legal Drinking Age

[truthaddict11]

what is your opinion of the legal drinking age? here in the US its 21, do you think it should be lowered? if so what age? and if you disagree why shouldnt it be lowered.

[schumi]

here in holland the legal drinking age is 16...I think that's a good standard..kids drink no mather what the legal age is...but if you legalize it for young people to drink you have more controle over their alcohol consumption I think...

It's like drugs, if you ban drugs everybody is going to buy them but if you legalize drugs you don't get the kick that you get from doing something that you arent supposed to do...

[Marxist in Nebraska]

I see no reason why humans need to be 21 to be allowed to drink alcohol. I do not recommend it, and I do not drink myself. I find it odd that we can buy tobacco or pornography at 18, but have to be 21 to drink.

[RebeldePorLaPAZ]

drinking should be at most 18 for a limit. either way kids under 21 still find a way to get there hands on it.( me :D )

I think it has to do with drunk driving and things like that. either way adults do it to so you can't always point the fingers at the teens.

i go with 18 to the most. 16 sounds good to me too. :P

[Umoja]

In the early 80's the Drinking age in the United States was 18. It was changed because of the danger it posed to high school students, it meant Seniors could buy alcohol for parties, and that lots of drunk driving occured. The amount of fatalities from drunk driving has dropped since the age was increased, I don't have the article that showed other reason but in general, I think the drinking age needs to be higher in the United States because we have a problem with drunk driving, and most of our towns don't have bars and driving is more essential here then in Europe.

[BuyOurEverything]

There should be no drinking age whatsoever. Drinking ages encourage irresponsable consumption of alcohol. Since it is forbidden, people under the legal age do it more and drink in larger quantities when they do because, hey, it's already illegal and you might as well drink alot when you can. Also, everyone is different and to make one arbitrary age where everyone is viewed as responsable is stupid.

[Marxist in Nebraska]

Umoja,

Maybe, rather than keeping alcohol away from teens, we should not be driving. Maybe we should take the tremendous responsibility of driving away from people, and support a proper mass transit system. There are so many fatal car accidents even when we are all sober.

[Funky Monk]

Think 18 is a good age. It allows those who are slightly younger to drink in a secure environment.

[UnionofSovietSocialistRepublics]

Originally posted by Marxist in [email protected] 24 2003, 12:07 AM
Umoja,

Maybe, rather than keeping alcohol away from teens, we should not be driving. Maybe we should take the tremendous responsibility of driving away from people, and support a proper mass transit system. There are so many fatal car accidents even when we are all sober.
a fine and well thought out answer, well put comrade.

[Pete]

Drinking ages are unneccassary authoritarian messures. They do a lot to promote law breaking (underage drinking) and irresponsible drinking. If, say, a 16 year old could drink in a safe environment they would probaly be more responsible than a 18 year old drinking illegally in Ontario, or as the case is here in Ottawa and all along the Ottawa River, 18 year olds going over to Quebec to drink then coming across the river to Ontario drunk ass hell. It would be safer to have either no drinking age, or one around 16, as that is, in my experience, the age when most kids start.

[Anarchist Freedom]

drinking age limits just adds to the problem,why you ask?

well lets see when your like 14 like me it almost spikes your curiosity because its not legal and its bad soo. your compelled to d it more often because your being bad and shit.

eh oh well lower the drinking age!



:che:

[Al Creed]

Originally posted by Marxist in [email protected] 23 2003, 07:07 PM
Umoja,

Maybe, rather than keeping alcohol away from teens, we should not be driving. Maybe we should take the tremendous responsibility of driving away from people, and support a proper mass transit system. There are so many fatal car accidents even when we are all sober.
Ive always felt that 16 was too young to legally allow someone to drive a vehicle. If Kids this age aren't allowed to buy cigarettes or beer or porn, or even vote, why should they be allowed to drive?

As well, all this does is create more traffic and pollution from cars. I am 19, yet I do not drive because I have no desire. I can reach anywhere I want and need to go by foot, bus, or bike, and Id like to prevent any growth of pollution rates or profit growth by automoblie corporations by any way possible

[Political Suicide]

To claim that their is no need for any drinking age limit, or that it should be as low as 16 is to be completly ignorant of the side effects this legalisation would cause. Unlinke ciggarettes and pornography which can be bought at 18, drinking causes violence (in the forms of violence, pointless vandalism, etc.), drunk driving (which i have lost many friends from) and various other harmful side effects stemming from being drunk. In the U.S. (I do not speak for any other country) it is not very hard for high school seniors of early college students to get their hands on alcohol, so therefore the problems ensue either way. But if you are to realistically look at how high that number would be should all these teenages and young adults were able to readily and easily get alcohol, you probably would think twice about it, especially if your talking about your own children.

At the same time, at 18 most people are rather irresponsible and ignorant, which causes problems. Of course, there are plenty 35 year olds who are the same way, but the younger outweighs the case. At 18 you can die for your country (17 if you choose to), so why can't you legally drink? Well, because usually we're too dumb to realize that we're putting ourself at great danger.

I am not against lowering it to 18, although i understand the serious side effects this would cause. I am however definitly against lowering it to 16 or lower.

[apathy maybe]

It should be legal at whatever age. In Aus, it is legal with the permission of the parents/gardiens for kids to drink, so long is it is in a privete home. Else the age is 18. With proper education there would not be the massive binge drinking that goes on. The legal age hardly stops people from drinking.

[BuyOurEverything]

It should be legal at whatever age. In Aus, it is legal with the permission of the parents/gardiens for kids to drink, so long is it is in a privete home. Else the age is 18. With proper education there would not be the massive binge drinking that goes on. The legal age hardly stops people from drinking.

Exactly. Legal ages don't stop people from drinking, it just usually makes them drink away from any adults.

[SgtPepper369]

I think somewhere in the neighboorhood of 16-18 is fine with me. The problem isn't age. It's responsibility.

[Invader Zim]

Here in the UK its 18, which IMO is stupid, not only is it completely ignored, but it is also completely unnecessary. I can see the wisdom in not allowing childeren to drink, because it can have serious effects such as stunting the growth in developing organs. But by sixteen I am sure that these problems will no longer be problems.

[Miss Guevara]

I think that the legal drinking age should be either 16 or18, because kids under the age of 21 they think its really cool to drink, and like to break the law, and so i think the legal drinking age should be lowered to stop some crime, and stop kids over the age of 16, and under the age of 21 getting arrested for under age drinking.

[ComradeRobertRiley]

The legal age that someone can drink alcohol in the UK is 5 (provided they are in their own home (parents home) if in a pub or in public then you have to be 18.

There should be NO age limit on drinking alcohol

[cubist]

"MISS GUEVARA" Posted on Nov 28 2003, 06:58 PM
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I think that the legal drinking age should be either 16 or18, because kids under the age of 21 they think its really cool to drink, and like to break the law, and so i think the legal drinking age should be lowered to stop some crime, and stop kids over the age of 16, and under the age of 21 getting arrested for under age drinking.

no younger than school leaver should be the law

firstly i see your point about underage drinkers getting a record,

but what about the fundamental issues of their health? at the moment not every teenager will go out drinking not every teenager will commit crime, lower the age limit and the younger the underage drinkers will get, it will still be cool it will still be fun but to younger people.

when people are drunk they are twice as likely to commit a serious crime as there ability to be rational and make rational decisions is gone,




kids will break the law with out alcohol it will still be cool to break the law even if they can drink,

kids thats what they are iressponsible little people.

Drink causes people to make silly irational decisions believe me i know i worked in a pub for a good 6 months every night puke fights over nothing.

[Pete]

If you can drink young, then you will learn before you are forced into the position of responsibility. That is the main arguement for a lower drinking age. At 16 mommy and daddy can make sure you don't go overboard, but when you are 21, you are fucked.

[Comrade of Cuba]

In belgium its legal to drink alcohol from the age of 16. And i have no problems with that. In the USA and Australia. Are the more problems than in Belgium. But I think that the legal drinking age (I think 16 is a good age) should be in all countries the same to avoid problems when travelling to other countries.

[Ernestocheguevara]

I think the age here (uk) is fine (18) all you younger one's on the board are gonna say, "Lower it" but when a load of drunk teenagers walk past your house every night singing, shouting, fighting, swearing and waking your kids up you'll soon want it raised with better control methods for the sale of alcohol put in place.

[MiDnIgHtMaRaUdEr]

I think the legal drinking age should be when you are dead. There is no reason why you need to...
A. Kill your liver.
B. Destroy your family.
C. End up doing something irresponcible.
D. "Drown away your sorrows" rather than finding a more productive coping method.

[andresG]

Originally posted by [email protected] 30 2003, 09:02 PM
I think the legal drinking age should be when you are dead. There is no reason why you need to...
A. Kill your liver.
B. Destroy your family.
C. End up doing something irresponcible.
D. "Drown away your sorrows" rather than finding a more productive coping method.
-It's my liver.

-Does drinking guarantee "destroying your family"? How about punishing those who "destroy their families"? Don't take it out on those of us without families who enjoy alcohol.

-Punish those "irresponsible" ones.

-They're my sorrows and I'll drown them if I want to. Besides, do you seriosuly think that's the only reason people drink? You puritans need help.

[Pete]

The problem with legal drinking age is the same as the problem with having drugs illegal: people will do them anyways, whether legal or not, so having them illegal only raises the crime rate.

[shakermaker]

well, 18 is good, but it doesn't really matter 'cos like 14 years old kids are drunken every friday evening.
But what I don't understand is why beer and other under 22% are for 18 and when you are 20 you can legally buy drinks that are over 22%? quite stupid...anyway.

by the way, does anyone know what is legal age to coffee shops in holland?

[hazard]

if you can be shipped off to catch bullets at eighteen to defend oil, why can't you also drink at that age? I'll tell you why. actually i dont know why. just chalk that one up to typical capitalist hypocrisy.

[MiDnIgHtMaRaUdEr]

YES! Alchohol makes for strong, healthy families and relationships! From now on, we force all fathers to come home drunk every night, beat their wives and children, lose their jobs, get divorces, and have all the children of the world live on child support! You might say its your liver, but its not your community and its not your family. These things belong to the community, and its our job to ensure the healthies of the lives for all of you. You can go and die for your country, the American imperialists see this as patriotic and good for the nation, and fighting for the defence of a socialist nation is a just and noble cause, but I don't see how going out and drinking is doing anyone good at all.

[truthaddict11]

do you honesty think anyone who drinks becomes an alcoholic? thats stupider than you wanting to ban tobacco.

[Comrade of Cuba]

Making alcohol illegal isn't a good answer to the problems of alcoholism. Making your own beer or liquor is so easy that everyone can do that. The best solution isn't to forbid drinking, but putting big punishments on aggressive drunk people or on people who drive drunk. You don't have to punish everyone by making alcohol illegal.

[Umoja]

The United States is in a different situations then most countries. At 18 in the United States you are technically an adult, but not really. The typical kid will either go to college, or get their first real job, but they are still Children. In the UK, kids are finished with "college" at 18 and are likely thinking about going off to University. Also, in the UK most towns have Pubs, in the United States this isn't the case.

Also, the United States is made up of numerous crowded urban areas. Lots more cars. Public transportation would solve this problem for cities, but we have a lot of space between open spaces, so driving is critical. Driving age also depends on the state, in NJ (the most densely populated state) you don't have full driving privleges until your 18. That makes plenty of sense to me, and most of the laws for drivers liscense treat kids 21 and under as youths. Because, the fact of the matter is, in the United States your rarely emancipated before 21.

[MiDnIgHtMaRaUdEr]

The only reason you have for legalizing alcohol is that people will do it anyways? We are talking theory here, not the ease of application. However, I feel that there should be a combonation of Marxist indoctrination at a young age, social stigma, and a strong police force to help combat crime and decrease if not completely eliminate drug and alcohol useage. However, eradication of all drug plants is not a necessary measure IMO. An idiot can hurt themselves with about everything, do you intend on banning glue as well? These plants may one day hold the cure to a disease, and used responsibly, they can provide comfort to people to the terminally ill (who don't want to pull the plug).

[Pete]

Also, in the UK most towns have Pubs, in the United States this isn't the case.


What o.O How do they live then? I mean pubs are great. Live acoustic music of some guy singing half drunk, 18 year olds hanging out with their 19 year old friends where one can get booze, the other cant (or not always atleast) ect ect. Shesh. Pubs are a kind of culture!


The only reason you have for legalizing alcohol is that people will do it anyways? We are talking theory here, not the ease of application.

Pure theory gets us nowhere, the realworld must be taken into consideration when talking about theory, no?

[monkeydust]

Look at prohibition in the 20's it in fact didn't lessen the age or level of alcohol consumption whatsoever merely drove it underground here's some of the things it did.

1. Caused more deaths from alcohol because people made their own, and did so badly.
2.Tied up police resources that could have been elsewhere
3.Was a cause for the spread of organised crime, many making fortunes on the black market.
4.In some ways made alcohol more desirable, because it was banned.

I think this in itself is an example of why alcohol shouldn't be banned.


As for the age, I feel it should definately be lowered, perhaps to 14 or 16 but with tighter regulations on this. How many people don't drink before 18, or even 21? Clearly the law doesn't work in this respect I'd like to think it would help people realise the bad side of drink at a young age before habits last too long. If in moderation I feel it's OK.

[MiDnIgHtMaRaUdEr]

Stealing, murdering, driving with a licence are illegal, but does that mean MORE people will do these things. If banning alcohol and drugs leads to a higher crime rate, then I feel that we should retaliate with a strong police force, rehabilitating the users while harshly punishing suppliers. Such people are one of the worst plauges to the people. The compromise the integrity of society by encouraging people to use drugs just in order to line their own pockets. Although state sponcered drug use would eliminate that aspect, such an action would send a message to the people that drug use is a GOOD thing, and would only encourage their way of life rather than impede it. Thus would see drug abuse levels rise instead of fall, and drug/alcohol related crime rates would rise, as it stands, many crimes are commited as a direct use of drugs and alcohol consuption, e.g. you rob a person when you dont have the money for your next batch of drugs.

[truthaddict11]

strong police state to enforce your anti drug laws? we have that now in capitalist countries and look what it has brought us overcrowded prisons, jailing people for several years for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, several times being killed of course the cops use the excuse of "self defense" even if the person was unarmed. the military has even been used to threaten people at gunpoint for merely having a pot plant. responding to drugs with a police state is fascist.

[truthaddict11]

Grow More Pot by Jello Biafra

"Does anybody out there know that for the first time in American history, the US army was used in a war operation against the American people Right near here, up in Humboldt County, about 200 miles north of San Francisco, right near a town called Shelter Cove.

Get this three to four-hundred American GIs dressed and fully armed with the automatic rifles, armed for battle; fanned out on maneuvers through the woods, backed up by a dozen black hawk attack helicopters. The mountain people up there were frightened out of their wits! They thought there was a war going on! Especially the ones who had soldiers kicking in the doors to their cabins, and putting guns to their heads in front of their children.

Why Who was the enemy in this war Not the Communists! Not Saddam Hussein! Not Earth First or even the spotted owl. No. The enemy they called out the army to put down secretly so as few people outside of Humboldt would get alarmed as possible... it wasn't even a person, or an army, or a terrorist group, it was a plant. The marijuana plant. And they actually did find a few for the GIs to pull up, and then they had to fly in more from the government stash so the pile would look big enough when they lit the bonfire for the network tv news cameras so they could say Yes, another triumph in the drug war.

Drug war. War. The american army sent to war against the american people. And we're supposed to feel relieved, and secure, and protected. Protected from what!

A lot of people with more guts than I'll ever have risked their life and limb all last summer at the Earth First redwood summer action, up in Humboldt County. They were chaining themselves to redwoods that were 3 times wider than they were, spread eagle. They were 800 years old, as the saws buzzed right over their heads. They stood in the dirt, as the bulldozers charged them and stopped right at their toes, where people waved clubs at them, charged them with logging trucks, shotguns, you name it. All to try and save some of the last unspoiled virgin forest we have left anywhere in this country from being chopped down and made into toilet paper, TV guides and the weekly world news.

On the other side, the logger's saying 'what about our jobs What about our families What about our lives You needed wood and cardboard to make those protest signs.' We need fuel. We need paper. It's almost gone, where are we gonna get more

The answer, for centuries, has been right under our nose. GROW MORE POT.

If we're serious about saving the earth, saving the ozone and our freedom to go about saving the earth and the ozone, we should start by paying all those dirt-poor coca farmers in South America and out-of-work loggers in Fortuna and Eureka, and midwest family farmers and rust belt families too, to all get together and grow more pot!

Why Get ready for this... There's a book out called The Emperor Wears No Clothes. The author's name is Jack Herer. It's published by Queen of Clubs, I think there's ads for it in High Times, or NORML, the National Organization for Reform of Marijuana Laws, they could direct you to one I'm sure, and in this book, among other places, it is written before the 20th century, the marijuana plant provided almost all the world's paper, all the world's clothing and textiles, and almost all the world's rope.

According to none other than the U.S. Department of Agriculture, you can make four times as much paper from an acre of marijuana hemp plants as you can from an acre of trees. And instead of chopping down all the redwoods in Humboldt County and turning Northern California, Oregon and Washington into Appalachia or the Sahara Desert, if you do it with hemp plants, you can just grow another crop a few months later and make more paper, at one-quarter the cost of making paper from wood pulp and only one-fifth the pollution. The ancient Romans knew this and grew it, Henry VIII made each farmer in old England grow their share, because they knew if you want the strongest natural
fiber there is, you all gotta do your part for the King and grow more pot!

And we did, too! Guess what Levis Jeans were originally made out of And guess what American flags used to be made out of And guess what the early drafts of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were written on And if that's too un-Christian for you, guess what they made Guttenburg and King James Bibles out of. Guess what you can use to power a car You can get at least 4 times as much cellulose to make gasohol or methanol from hemp stems as you can from a corn stalk, which along with solar energy would be a great way to avoid dying for oil in Saudi Arabia.

In the 20's and 30s, most American cars and farm machinery had the option of running on gas or on methanol; most racing cars still DO run on methanol. And George Washington and Thomas Jefferson grew cannabis on their plantations, and smoked it too!

In the 1760s in the American colonies you could even be jailed for not growing pot, because that was part of the key to become economically independent from Britain. Hemp was legal tender in America, a subsitute for money, from 1630 clear up until the early 1800s, and hemp seeds are a great source of protein, better than soy beans, and it's cheaper than soy beans, too... or so says the US Department of Agriculture.

Marijuana is legal for medical use in 34 states. Used to treat Glaucoma, and pain caused by cancer. You can digest more protein out of a hemp seed than a soy bean seed, it's even shown some signs of being able to combat herpes. And, guess what kind of a parachute Mr. Drug war 'junta' man himself George Bush used when he bailed out of that bomber in world war 2 Hemp was illegal by then, but farmers were briefly ordered to grow it again in this country for the war effort and all, and the US army had their own stash all along in the colonies in the Philippines.

So.... how did everything get turned around so damn bad Doesn't it strike you as a little dumb that we burn oil and choke ourselves and chop down all our trees and ruin innocent people's lives by branding them criminals, and throwing them in jails, or sending them off to drug camps, or taking all their property and selling it before they're brought to trial, in the process making crack and heroin cheaper and easier to get than pot. Why do we do this when we don't have to

Meanwhile the police chief of LA Daryl Gates gets front page approval for telling the US Senate Commitee that pot smokers should be shot on sight, because smoking pot is treason, because after all it's illegal. Why was marijuana cracked down on And why was it done so violently

Well, ready

In 1936, Popular Mechanics Magazine hailed the invention of a new machine to process hemp, predicting that marijuana hemp would once again become the world's largest cash crop. This did not set at all well with people like Hearst Paper Manufacturing, or Kimberly Clark, or other cutthroat multinationals who happened to have large timber holdings. Didn't sit too well with tobacco barons, for obvious reasons, and it sure as hell didn't sit to well with our old buddies DuPont. Hemp processing uses only 15th the chemicals needed to process wood pulp, and DuPont had just patented a new wood pulp sulfide process. And DuPont's patented plastic fibers had just passed up hemp as the number two fiber next to cotton, and they wanted to keep it that way.

And the last thing the big drug companies wanted was to lose their share of the ever-lucrative disease industry market to more affordable medicine made from marijuana or other natural ingredients because, check this out You can't own and make money off a patent for medicine in this country unless the medicine has chemicals in it. If it's all natural ingredients, you can't patent it.

Maybe that's why we don't have access to a cure for cancer or AIDs, or why the health food store I go to keeps getting harassed by Federal Authorities for selling herbal medicines. Meanwhile, guess who owns Congress

So, marijuana was outlawed in 1937. And they fanned the racism fires, playing the racism card just like they do when they want to crack down on rock and roll, or rap, or hip hop, or something like that. They said that smoking marijuana might cause you to fall under the influence of listening to jazz. I believe it was even said on the floor of Congress that marijuana had to be banned because smoking it might make a black man look at a white woman twice. And let's not forget that US Treasury Department-funded documentary film called 'Reefer Madness'

So marijuana was outlawed as devil weed in 1937. Only 53 years ago, it was legal. Need I say more on why our beloved fearless leaders go out of their way to censor our access to information so damn much Can you imagine the mass outrage if this kind of stuff ever really got out, and people knew that the so big drug problem they keep reading about and hearing about is being caused by the government themselves And people knew how easily each one of us individually could turn our ecological and human crisis around without resorting to nazi bullshit like oil wars and drug wars, just by saying 'no' to George Bush And people knew that the very companies that provide us with such crucial conveniences as kleenex, paper towels and junk mail have systematically and brutally re-arranged every single one of our lives so that we are literally wiping our ass with our own future.

And it doesn't have to be this way!

I mean, I'll tell ya, I do feel kind of funny saying all of this because I used to be a pot-head and I hate smoking the stuff, the whole low energy, stoner dead-end vibe that comes with it...

But, you don't need to smoke pot to realize that the real drug problem in this country is not the drugs. And we can help solve our drug problems, crimes problems, environmental problems, even our racial problems, if we say 'no' to George Bush, and get together, and grow more pot."

[Domino]

When can a person be sent to war? at 18? 21? I'm not sure about this but, related to the drinking age... I think it's stupid that the legal drinking age is till 21 in some places and you can be a soldier at 18 (correct me if I'm wrong). So it's wrong to drink but it's good to kill?

I'm just rambling here.

[hazard]

more people should get drunk off of love. to be honest, however, driving while love drunk is just as dengerous as driving drunk drunk. I almost got killed a couple of monthes back while driving in that state. didn't see a lamppost that had fallen into the middle of the road until like the very last second. I had enough time to mutter "Jesus Christ Almighty!" and swirve violently to the right and miss it by a mere fraction of a millimetre or so. after, I assumed it was an assassination attempt on my life. maybe I was right. maybe not.

[SonofRage]

No matter what age you set the limit at, people will argue that it is arbitrary and should be changed. In my opinion, most 18 year olds really shouldn't be drinking alcohol and the current drinking age of 21 seems appropriate. Honestly, who cares? Some people act like a fundamental civil right is being violated or something.