I'MMA LET YOU FINISH
frist?
"How to Reach 100,000 People for Under a Dollar"
http://freewayblogger28.cf.huffi...ingtonpost.com/
if liddy's for it, im probably agin it.
hey--first on topic! (like that matters)
Drunk drivers (teen and adult) are much better at killing Americans than anything any terrorist could fantasize about.
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gonna sound stupid to some, but what you need for young drinkers is what you need for young drivers - a learners permit. IOW, you are alllowed to drink so long as you are with your parents or other responsible adults.
I run a bar and can tell with a high level of confidence which of my patrons are capable of driving safely. Almost without fail, the people least able to drink and drive are the youngest of the legal drinkers. They just don't know enough about how their bodies respond to alcohol. The same problem would occur whether the legal age was 18 or 21. Let them drink, but keep them off the road.
There was a very interesting anonymous editorial in the OC Weekly once by a teacher who observed that less and less alcohol litter was visible by the roadside at the same time as teen drunk driving accidents and arrests declined. The guy speculated that it wouldn't be too hard to have a low-investment just-below-legal hack worked out to allow teens to driunk and fuck at the same levels they always had, but smarter, so they would not only not not get caught but be in siognificantly less danger. Is it inconceivable, he asked, that teenagers who are smarter than any previous generation in other statistics could miss the onslaught of "smart drinking" advice aimed at adults? Is it impossible that they could be posting their own designated drivers?
How European of you, Atrios. My kids have advocated for the same thing. Best to learn how to drink and then later get a license to drive.
Drink responsibly, that is.
CLEARLY THE ONLY POSSIBLE ANSWER IS TO BAN THIS "ALCOHOL" AND MOBILIZE A PARAMILITARY POLICE FORCE TO PROTECT CITIZENS FROM IT AT ALL TIMES AND IN EVERY PLACE.
Michael Ledeen, unhinged, calling Bush Neville Chamberlain:
"We should want Hizbollah destroyed in both Lebanon and Syria, Assad under attack from his own people for playing this awful game, and Khamenei humiliated as the artefice of a failed operation. We should be openly calling for regime change in Damascus and Tehran, on the grounds that the civilized world cannot any longer tolerate tyrannical murderers calling the shots in the Middle East and elsewhere.
But we have not heard anything about "seizing the moment." We hear lawyer talk and diplotalk, surrender talk and appeasement talk, and there is no action whatsoever. Is this not the time to go after the terrorist training camps in Syria and Iran? What in the world are we waiting for?
And finally, if we dither through this one, the next one will be worse. Maybe much worse. It's not going away. Stability is a mirage."Chamberlain had a choice between dishonor and war. He chose war and got dishonor. You too, Mr. President. It's the way it works."
Best to learn how to drink and then later get a license to drive.
noblejoanie | 07.15.06 - 12:45 pm |
Yes, and teach them to drink as opposed to the repeated failed suicide we saw so often in the marines, where a person's only joy is alcoholic anaesthesis.
There was a very interesting anonymous editorial in the OC Weekly once by a teacher who observed that less and less alcohol litter was visible by the roadside at the same time as teen drunk driving accidents and arrests declined
Four words: Homeless people Bottle deposits.
And Atrios has concocted the teenage male American Sophie's Choice.
Why don't we get drunk, and screw
I still find it odd that we feel 18 year olds are sufficiently mature to vote and to serve in the armed forces, yet too immature to drink.
If it's the MADD drunk driving thing, then the proposal suggested by Atrios makes sense.
Well Atrios- I did not fact check this, but I seem to remember Colorado candidate and CEO Pete Coors was on the same side of this issue as you.
Pete, as you posted, was charged with a DUI this week.
For the record, I don't think there is any good reason to lower the drinking age to 18. 18 year olds in my opinion are very prone to acting out risky behavior and this is made worse when alcohol is introduced into the social equation.
Poncho & Lefty
As a sort of compromise I'd propose the option for the under-21 crowd to choose between a drinking license and a driving license. You couldn't have both until you become 21.
You are old enough to die for your country, you are old enough to drink AND drive (but not at the same time). Period. Don't make them choose.
I would just like to say that when Liddy Dole was 18, she not only blew the entire football teams of UNC and Duke, but drove her drunken ass all over North Carolina looking for what she called stick pussy.
So how many "older" bar patrons spend all evening doing "Jager bombs"?
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Shorter Ledeen: "What else are goyim for but dying for my racist club?" Michael Ledeen, for those of you who don't hate this nonhuman thing, wrote a book openly advocating modern fascism, was a major warmonger for most of his life and in the road to Iraq, has a lot of ties to Italian intelligence (the same guys who sold us the Niger yellowcrap) and was tied to P2.
CLEARLY THE ONLY POSSIBLE ANSWER IS TO BAN THIS "ALCOHOL" AND MOBILIZE A PARAMILITARY POLICE FORCE TO PROTECT CITIZENS FROM IT AT ALL TIMES AND IN EVERY PLACE.
k&y pose as narcs
Actually, this is the more likely scenario.
CLEARLY THE ONLY POSSIBLE ANSWER IS TO BAN THIS "ALCOHOL" AND MOBILIZE A PARAMILITARY POLICE FORCE TO PROTECT CITIZENS FROM IT AT ALL TIMES AND IN EVERY PLACE.
k&y pose as narcs
Actually, this is the more likely scenario.
I personally think our DUI laws are too lenient. We should have permanent, irrevocable loss of driver's license by the second or third DUI offense. What is the justification for continuing to let someone drive who proves they're a danger?
You need to drive to work? Better think about that before being a drunk driver. Too late? Too bad, hope you can find a nice apartment near a bus line. Put the burden on the drunk drivers instead of having stupid rules that shift the burden to society.
You really think that optional drinking/driving license would work? Think back to your teenage years and you'll realize it probably would accomplish nothing.
Every group of teenagers would simply need one person within their group to choose the drinking option, while the rest could choose the driving option. This would enable the entire group (minus one) to both have a license and easily obtain alcohol.
I'd tend to be in favor of reducing the drinking age, but I really don't think this compromise idea would accomplish much of anything.
having been all three phases of drinking driver my personal experience has shown that it was a sliding scale ...I was very incompetent at first ... I actually developed skill at driving inebriated and then it fell off back to the incompetent/totally removed from able level
And what's the estimated ratio for the number of times a person drives drunk versus getting a DUI - 200:1 if I recall correctly.
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bottle deposit: good point. Kei once worked in a place that took bottles and had a regular customer who drove up from Ohio because the return rate was five cents better in Michigan.
I think that we should raise the government-approved-killing age to 21.
Atrios, as someone who worked and lived on my own since age 16, I'd have been completely fucked without being able to drive to and from school and work.
I never combined drinking and driving, and firmly believe that if you're old enough to be sent off to die in war, you should damn well be allowed to make your own choices about such matters.
So how many "older" bar patrons spend all evening doing "Jager bombs"?
During football season I often have to go to a bar to see the games I want, and I am astounded at how many people--mostly but not exclusively men--my age and older are still doing the sort of recreational drinking I associate with people in their twenties. The most memorable instance was two guys in their fifties nonchalantly chatting with two women in their early twenties, all casually trying to reconstruct the night before through patchy memories.
"I don't remember seeing Dave"
"Dude, you were talking to him for like twenty minutes"
"At Jay's or the Wild Onion?"
For the record, I don't think there is any good reason to lower the drinking age to 18.
18 is old enough to vote and die in a war. It's asinine that you can kill humans or be killed but you can't drink beer at that age.
A big part of the binge drinking teens like to engage in is because we treat alcohol as some taboo, which makes it irresistible. Instead of some secret, forbidden object calling out to teens, treat alcohol as a normal part of life. Less likelihood of binge behavior if it's something as ordinarily available as water.
KRUPP GUNS VERSUS FAUX BUTTER
July 15 1869
During war with Prussia, French ruler Napoleon III commissions Hippolye Mege Mouries to find a butter substitute. A patent for margarine is issued, it being based on beef fat instead of milk fat. But even with the tactically superior spread, the war is still lost.
Off to the farmer's market to see if the tomatillos, anchos and other peppers are ready yet.
The squash will be in abundance sure, as will the eggplant and tomatoes. Ah, the joys of summer, even if it is hot.
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The decrease in teen drunk driving fatalities is probably due to widespread adoption of the Air Bag, rather than teen drinking laws.
I have looked into the statistics for OWI injuries and fatalities for Iowa and one of the problems is that the statistics are incomplete because the police officer is too busy assisting the injured to collect the evidence needed to prove that alcohol was a factor in the accident.
The police have been trained to spot impaired drivers and are arresting them before they become involved in an accident. The increased chance of being caught also is a deterrent.
In Iowa City we have a very high arrest rate for OWI the highest for Iowa but Johnson County (where Iowa City is located) has a very low OWI
fatality rate about as low as it gets.
I think this is because the impaired drivers are caught while traveling at low speed which reduces the chance of a fatailty by a large factor.
Leave the drinking age at 21 and institute a military draft that begans at age 40 - that'll put an end to this country's optional wars.
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July 15 1974
During a live broadcast of the Sarasota, Florida morning news program Suncoast Digest, newscaster Chris Chubbuck tells the audience: "In keeping with Channel 40's policy of bringing you the latest in blood and guts, and in living color, you are going to see another first: an attempted suicide." Then she blows her brains out with a .38 revolver.
Note: Whether a lie or incompetence, his just goes to show once again that you can never trust the mainstream media.
European kids learn to drink at home, and In places like Germany, driver's training is expensive and far more rigorous than the high school-based model common here. Drinking is a problem in both places among adults and youth, but drunk driving is less coddled there than here.
K and Y, how come no link to your blog?
A friend of mine was seriously injured a few days ago when a 17-year-old boy blew through a stop sign and hit her car just in front of the driver's side door. A bone in her lower back was broken, and she'll be in a stiff body cast for the next three months. She was to leave today for a trip to Russia. She was lucky though.
And the kid hadn't even been drinking.
People take cars for granted. Not a good attitude.
Teenagers are shitty drivers drunk OR sober. I think the best way to solve the problem is to grant me the license to shoot at any car that pulls up next to me at a red light with their bass thumping at ear-shattering volume.
okay, well that doesn't actually have anything to do with the subject, but i really just hate those assholes.
Incidentally, does anyone remember the name of the band from the clip Atrios posted two Fridays ago that featured the cello player?
So what Chimpy say to Pootie-Poot at the private meeting?
Q Can I ask, what did you take President Putin to mean when he said that they wouldn't participate in any crusades or any holy alliances? What was that a reference to?
MR. HADLEY: You know, I asked myself the same question. (Laughter.)
Q Did you get an answer? (Laughter.)
MR. HADLEY: I'm still taking it under advisement. (Laughter.) I'm going to let myself know what I think a little bit later.
They should just pass a law against driving while drunk.
She was to leave today for a trip to Russia. She was lucky though.
Russia has got to be the country with the most drunk drivers! Wasn't such a problem in the Soviet days (way fewer autos) but now... look out!
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i bet putin despises bush. im not sure if bush would be aware of it, tho.
The prospect of Pete Coors and Laura Bush careening through the streets of Aspen or up in Jackson Hole is an intriguing one.
We'll update it one of these days. It will be linked regularly then. The address is still the same and before updating it is still better for its banks and banks of links than for its boring posts.
Yes. That's all we need 18 year olds drinking legally.
I do, now that I'm old, like those laws that limit teenagers to driving before dark and without other kids in the car...I forget exactly which states have these kinds of laws
Russia has got to be the country with the most drunk drivers!
Damn wodka.
i bet putin despises bush. im not sure if bush would be aware of it, tho.
Pootie's former KGB, no? I'm sure he's quite adept at hiding his inner thoughts and processes.
My sons been driving since he was about 15 1/2 (driving age here). So far the only accident he's had was hitting a deer. The ginourmous buick he drives may have something to do with this. It's not that slow but it's discouraging to race.
i bet putin despises bush. im not sure if bush would be aware of it, tho.
pretzelattack
I think Putin knows well that Bush the individual, is comically stupid and just a mindless mascot. Basically he's dealing with the people who are in charge.
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i bet putin despises bush. im not sure if bush would be aware of it, tho.
Pootie's former KGB, no? I'm sure he's quite adept at hiding his inner thoughts and processes.
plantsman,
I don't think much training is necessary to hide one's true feelings from Bush...
He's so damn arrogant I'm sure he thinks Putin is his inferior. That whole Pooty-poot thing, besides being embarrassing to every American, tells you a lot about how Bush views Putin.
from daily kos:
Clueless in St. Petersburg
a must read - Bush is an idiot.
Good afternoon. I have slept late today, and as I'm trying to wake up, the first thing I read is that our President actually told the Russian head of state that Iraq was a model of democracy.
Ya know, I expect them to say that sort of thing to the gaggle, or to Brit Hume with a straight face, but you don't go trying that jackassery with people that actually matter. Does it occur to him that he just makes himself (and by extension, us) look like delusional lying asshats when he pulls stunts like that?
I'm glad Putin had the sense to laugh in his face when he said it. I can't imagine how furious the littlest king must have been about that.
OT, but even at my advanced age I am learning new and interesting things.
Today I learned that that impeachment proceedings can be initiated by charges “transmitted from the legislature of a state or territory”.
Interesting, no?
Don't drink and drive. It's dangerous. You could spill your drink.
I turned 18 just as those new laws were coming into effect in Virginia. It was weird. For one year, the legal buying beer to go age was raised to 19, the theory being that 18-year-old high school kids would buy it for their classmates. But this was viewed as unfair to 18-year-olds, so the law was ammended so that 18-year-olds could drink in bars. So for that year, we 18-year-olds could legally drive to a bar and drink, but couldn't get a six-pack at 7-11 and take it home to drink.
"It's asinine that you can kill humans"
there's no intrinsic honor or privilege in that ability or drinking (they both could be viewed as crazy and/or wasteful)
Yes. That's all we need 18 year olds drinking legally.
Well, back when the earth was cooling, the drinking age in NYState was 18. Don't know what the statisitcs were for accidents then. In college, there were a few kids who drank too much, but no one talked about binge drinking then.
From what I've seen, most kids are drinking long before they turn 21.
I don't trouble myself over the contentions between the greater and lesser daemons Putin and Bush. What is wanted is herd of swine to cast them into, and a cliff to run them off. The quality of life on the planet would immediately improve.
I remember when Florida raised the drinking age from 19 to 21 in 1985. It went into effect on June 30, 1985. It grandfathered in the 19 year olds at the time. If you were born before June 30, 1966 you could buy alcohol, if your birthday was after July 1, 1966 you had to wait until you were 21.
You can't spell Florida without duh.
the weirdest drinking law I ever heard of was:
19 for women
21 for men
If the de facto federal drinking age was eliminated, the states could experiment and one may come up with a system that works to teach teens how to drink responsibly
I favor a drinking license issued at 19 (to make it after high school) that has to be renewed every six months. If a kid has any alcohol related incident -- dui, disorderly conduct, public urination, public drunkeness -- he has to turn in his card and loses drinking privileges until 21. Because kids will claim they "lost" the card, there should be a $1000 fine for not turning in the card, and it expires every 6 months anyway, so they don't gain much by hiding it.
The state could charge a lot for the card to pay for it, and require every participant to enroll in driving and alcohol safety courses
If they were just slamming into one another, or utility poles all by themselves, i wouldn't have any objections to letting younger teens drink (and drive, cuz you KNOW they're not gonna call home)...
but they don't just kill themselves or one another...
they have a distressing habit of slamming into other folks, and walking away, leaving carnage in their wake...
just sayin
the weirdest drinking law I ever heard of was:
19 for women
21 for men
DemByDefault
What happens when frat boys make the laws.
Wow, what are aravosis and atrios drinking this morning? 
Better, bring back the Star Wars xmas special to sober things up.
""We should want Hizbollah destroyed in both Lebanon and Syria, Assad under attack from his own people for playing this awful game, and Khamenei humiliated as the artefice of a failed operation. We should be openly calling for regime change in Damascus and Tehran..."
1. Bolton tells U.N. that Syria and Iran are directly responsable Hamas and Hizbollah.
2.Hizbollah flys drone into Israeli ship.
3.U.S. Navy ships move into Lebanese waters to pick up U.S. citizens due to bombardment of Lebanese roads and airports.
4. Gulf of Tonkin II?
Sending my son over to Europe for his freshman year of college, we began educating him on how to drink at home. Learning to appreciate wines, how to watch consumption etc.
We knew all the stories of exchange students getting embarrassingly bombed the minute they got to the host country and didn't want our son to go bonkers.
It helped a bit (years later we are getting the stories of how bombed and how bonkers it was) but the attitude that alcohol is to be enjoyed, controlled, and understood helped.
How much drunk driving occurs in Europe? Not many kids have cars, I know. They can't do much damage to others on a moped.
Something tantalizingly denied is misused. Educate the kids.
those(the years of law change)were weird in a sense similar to today's (flex warp anneal society change struggle) to understand or anticipate. I personally was astounded that I was not only allowed to but encouraged to go hang out at a stinky exaggerated puke fest called the Alhaus (pronounced Ale House) with scores of familiars that eventually along the way suffered horribly from their initiation into the fledgling future drunks of america fraternity. It could be viewed by the survivors as what has been termed a "cryin' as shame"
I always thought that Colorado had a reasonable solution to this issue. Back in the 60's and 70's at 18 one could drink 3.2 beer and wine fritzers of the same alcohol level then at 21 one was able to indulge in the full gauntlet of inebrietes.
There were specific 3.2 bars etc. to cater to the college, 18 to 21 age groups.
This aicheved several things it gave them a chance to learn "bar ettiquette", a place to socialize and a way to learn how ones body reacted to moderate doses of alcohol.
While at the same time it prevented them from over indulging in public on hard liquor or real beer.
It wasn't perfect but in did seem to be a reasonable way to bridge those years.
Drinking or driving license, truly brilliant! I know which one I would have picked.
I further propose the drink-but-not-drive license exempts GEMs.
I was born in New Orleans in 1952. The drinking age was 18, as in New York state.
The driving age was 15.
One of my friends (and also his girlfriend) was killed as a result of his driving. He may have been drunk, but I think if he was impaired, it was probably dope. He was 19 at the time (December 1970). Considering that I probably knew two hundred kids my age, all of whom drank legally (if not always responsibly), this is 0.5%. Still high, but (a) I don't know it was alcohol and (b) an awful lot of kids die behind the wheel independent of alcohol.
When I went to college in New Jersey, the drinking age was 21 there. In neighboring NY, it was 18. In every dorm was a 21 year old resident advisor, part of whose job was to buy beer for the underage students. This was to cut down on stupidity like kids driving to NY, getting drunk, and trying to drive back to NJ.
When at last all the states went to 18, roughly 1973, the formerly underage students went hog-wild. The school opened a pub, and very ugly drinking ensued. Whatta disaster. I swore off the pub after two or three nights convinced me that farm kids from Iowa and good ol' boys from Mississippi and dudes from California and preppies from New Hampshire just did not have a clue about their limits or what beer was supposed to do for you.
My French father introduced me to wine when I was around 10. I don't think I was ever drunk at school, and pretty rarely otherwise (though there were some heavy bouts in Scotland, which, if you've spent a few winters in Edinburgh, you'll understand.)
The number one problem is that American kids think booze is some sort of forbidden fruit. If they are taught to drink responsibly, as I believe I was and as my wife and I have tried to do with my daughter, they are much less likely to do themselves or others harm with alcohol. This isn't a sure guarantee; there are people who because of their own biochemistry or other factors are extremely susceptible to alcoholism. But I assure you that in Europe, in part due to draconian punishments for drunken driving, there is much less of a problem with DUI. The main thing is to teach kids that alcohol is a great thing in limited doses.
Atrios is right. In most parts of Europe, you can get beer and wine at 18. For the hard stuff you have to be 21. I think this is not a bad way to go.
If the Feds had not linked highway money to raising the age to 21, Louisiana would still be at 18. They were the last state to capitulate to this extortion.
A wit once said of my generation that the designated driver was the guy who hadn't vomited all over his shoes.
Since a seventeen year old can join the military, I propose that anyone with an active duty i.d. card should be able to buy alcohol. How desperate does a seventeen year old have to be to drink legally? Would this have enticed the Bush twins to enlist a couple of years ago?
I'm wondering if much of that decline can be contributed just to air bags.
-- drinking age
-- driving regulation
-- going to war ............
maybe Tim Leary was right :
only allow citizens under 30 to vote.
Christ, what's this, Atrios, your version of flag burning and gay marriage amendments?! There are WAY more important things to worry about this election year than whether or not some teenager gets to get drunk! When Bush is the fuck out of the WH, then there'll be time to argue this sort of meaningless nonsense!
on second thought, Jim (above)
seems to have nailed it.
OT:
Let's not be confused. Israel is in a far better legal and moral position vis a vis Hezbollah than the United States is with Iraq (which, it's true, ain't saying much). Don't let Freeper bloodlust and pro-Israel zealotry cloud the issue. The current Israeli gov't is left-of-center, and its US equivalent (Gore, say) would be reviled by the same knuckledraggers who are siding with Olmert. At the same time, Israel is fighting hardcore rightwing religious fanatics — antigay, anti-woman, anti-sex, anti-science, anti-art, anti-infidel, etc. — who are distantly related to the rightwing "Christian" elements that Freepers tend to appease at home. If anything, the Israel/Lebanon situation just highlights the abysmal immorality and failure of the Bush adventure in Iraq. It is NOT the same fight, as much as the Bush loyalists would have us believe otherwise. That said, Israel has brought on its current problems largely itself, and does not need to be cheered or praised by anyone. Saddest of all is that Bush has absolutely no authority of any sort to do a damn thing about the situation, and any escalation can be blamed in part on the bankruptcy of our own incompetent, noxious administration.
considering the scarcity of "adults" making any rational decisions, the young peoples might want to keep their wits about themselves until these high minded international adventurists are brought under control (and safely in prison)
I started drinkin beer with my folks when i was 12 or 13...at dinner, usually.
i started drinking hard stuff with my folks when i was 16...
i went overseas at 19 (in 1965)...
i got my one and only dwi violation when i was 35
i have never (knock wood) had an auto accident when drinking...
that's just me, i know...
that doesnt mean Bush and his feeble minded "Pinky And The Brain" take over lunatics wont use Israel's entry into their piece of the conflict as a cat's paw to expand united state's rearend deeper immersion into a course that is growing inextricable more and more, hour by hour. Hell George's Joyboy has already got us down for at least until the next presidential election. Looks to me like the fighting may never stop for my/our country ...least in my lifetime.
In a comment upstream I am supportive of the assertion that if an 18 year old is of age to die in war then he should be given the privledge to drink alcohol. I could support a law that allows anyone who is enlisted in the armed services the right to drink. I can suppport it and we could find enlistments increasing if such a law were enacted.
y'know it used to be practically every time you saw someone driving stupid you could depend on it being a young male. now the girls with cell phones are catching up.
i frequently drive in an area where there are lots of young wealthy kids and i am constantly amazed how recklessly they drive, cutting off everyone, running stop signs, etc. also constantly amazed at the cars they are driving too.
i would way rather have kids drink than drive.
and ny i'm pretty sure didn't up the drinking age till '86 when they were required to for fed funds.
I am always amazed at the ease with which people go to that "what we need is more punishment" place. More and stricter dui laws? Studies show that many driving activities that are not regulated (cell phone, eating, dealing with kids, etc.) impair driving beyond the .08 legal alcohol limit.
This country expects its children to cross the 21 line as fully-formed adults -- It is literally nonsensical. A bartender friend of mine was (very reluctantly) forced to eject a returning Irag-war vet from his bar a few weeks back because he was underage. Welcome home fellas!
Unfortunately, the former patchwork of drinking ages was a terrible idea: 15 years ago, Vermont's drinking age was 18 while Massachussetts' was 21 -- and guess what? Mass. teens were driving into trees on their way home from Vermont every weekend.
(So does that mean a constitutional amendment is required? We could add it to the DMA and flag-burning amendments. Yee haa!)
I don't see the problem with drunk driving. It's that much less competition for the rest of us. Oh ok sometimes they kill other people but in the big scheme of things they generally kill themselves. So what's the harm? Ditto with guns. Most people killed by a gun in their own home are killed with their own gun. That's actually proof that guns are safe and good for the rest of us. If they're going to kill themselves then I couldn't be happier about that.
what worries me most about 18 year old drinking isn't the driving aspect, but their associations with other teens younger than them. At 21 one rarely parties down with a fifteen year old, but plenty of high schoolers hang out with 15-18 year olds. Let Ashley the 18 year old buy booze and Ashley the 15 year old will end up drinking it
When I was growing up in Virginia the law was you could drink 3.2% beer if you were under 21. Over 21 you could drink 6.4%, wine and liquor. It made much more sense. There was much less incentive to forge an ID. If someone was having a party you'd get a keg of low test beer in case the cops showed up to keep out of trouble.
If the drinking age was lowered to 18 the law enforcement effort that is now being used to prevent 18-21 year olds from drinking could be spent keeping everyone from drunk driving.
I just can't imagine what it would be like to be a college student, living a way from home and supposedly not able to drink alcohol. What a fucking joke. I wonder what the figures are on what percent of kids do and don't drink.
Ground report from Deutschland, by a 26 year old woman who started drinking freshman year of college:
-Beer and wine: 16 years old to purchase, no restriction as far as I know on what parents may serve to their own children. I saw a father give a toddler in a high chair a sip of his wheat beer. The kid seemed to like it.
-All other legal alcohol: 18 years old
-Driving age (after a VERY rigorous and expensive course, followed by an extremely stringent test): 18
Moped: 15 or 16, after more driving training than most Americans get for actual cars
-DWI: .05 if pulled over, .03 if you cause an accident (that's one beer, y'all.)
-Penalties for DWI: get caught above about .10 and you get to repeat very expensive driving school to get relicensed and pay loads of fines - you might get your license back if this was the first serious infraction.
German police dealing with suspected DWI's make American police look lenient and well-mannered. Even here in the Bavarian sticks, most adults will not drive after more than one beer or glass of wine. In general, young Germans seem to have less self-destructive attitudes towards alcohol than Americans, but it's not perfect. There are plenty of German alcoholics; my German boyfriend doesn't touch the stuff due to watching, at about age 15 or 16, a relative destroy his family and then his body with booze.
I'd support a beer/wine consumption age drop. Every few years, a kid from my high school would die in a drunk-driving accident on the way back from a "land party". Consumption laws are so well enforced in my town that loads of kids drive out to the country to share a keg someone's older brother bought. Of course, there aren't enough non-drinkers there (if any!) to get everyone safely back to town.
I'm all for parties with a parent around who gathers up the car keys and lets the kids at the beer, then encourages them to treat it like a sleepover.
Anyway. Kids often drink. Adults under 21 most certainly drink at college. The sooner we can fully understand and accept that this occurs, the better off we'll all be.
Kids needs cars to get to their job so they can earn enough money to drink and drive.
Giving them a choice between drinking and driving is no choice at all.
The variety in drinking ages also puts an additional burden on workers in the bars and restaurants who already get the blame for serving minors and over serving drivers.
If we must experiment, drop the drinking age one year. Check the results, if nothing untoward happens drop it another year.
Allow me to suggest, as some others have above, the rather sensible approach Virginia took until forced to raise the drinking age.
Basically, you could by beer, in an open container, from a server, at 18. (Note that there are no real "bars" in Virginia, to sell booze, you have to earn at least 50% of your money from food sales.) You could buy beer to take-away at 19 (this was theoretically to keep beer out of high schools). You could buy anything at 21.
I think the beer by the glass/pitcher at 18, hard likker at 21 makes a great deal of sense. Virginia always had the younger age for beer because of the large military population. Are you trying to tell me that wounded veterans should come back from Iraq and not be allowed to drink?
I think the current system is part of what is leading adults to think of high schoolers as "children." This is definately not healthy.
Also, high schoolers can be told to wait to drink if they will be allowed to once they are out of high school. But no one expects not to drink at all in college. If you aren't planning to wait until 21, why not get an earlier jump start?
Bad situation all around.
I never noticed there was much distinction between a drunk 50 year old driver, and an drunk 18 year old driver.
I'd suggest raising your children to drink at home, in your company, to learn how to do it responsibly.
My folks did.
I rarely drank until I turned 50, when I fell in love with Erdinger wiess bier in Chiangmai, my new home.
And after a couple (two is just right, the ultimate long lasting happy buzz) of tall cold ones, I take a tuk-tuk home, for 50 cents.
On the other hand, as a young man in Virginia, I do not recall what some posters are stating about Va allowing 18 year olds to drink, at all.
I recall we used to drive over to D.C., where the drinking age for beer was 18, and they would stamp your hand to buy hard liquor if you were over 21. THAT I know is true.
I didn't drink, though. Spoils a good reefer high.
One of my closest childhood friends was run over and killed at the age of 6 by a drunk driver (who I understand would've been in his early 20s). Anyone who's ever lost a friend or relative to drunk driving -- whatever age the drunk driver -- isn't going to cheer on anything that might increase DWIs.
However, teens blatantly flout the 21-year-old drinking age hundreds of thousands of times every day, and that, I think, weakens respect for all laws. Plus you've got colleges and universities wasting judicial resources on prosecuting a sophomore with a six-pack in her dorm room while non-drink related crimes of robbery and assault go unchecked.
As someone who, at 38, still hasn't got a driver's license, I prefer toughening driver's license requirements at all ages...
I'm 19 years old. I've driven to excess before and crashed, I've also done the same with drinking. I've even driven home before, fall-down drunk, and was lucky enough to keep the story to myself.
There are two problems that surround each. Poor decison making, and inexperience. Some may argue they're one in the same, I disagree.
Poor decision making is why young folks perpetuate this drinking culture in America that makes it seem as if we'll never 'grow up' and be ready for drinking laws more like those in Europe.
The ability to make wise decisions is something most young people (lets just say 16-21) will rarely attain. I don't see this changing anytime in the foreseeable future.
The problems we CAN change are the inexperience young people have with both alcohol and driving (apart from each other by all means!!)
The most alarming thing about underage drinking to me are kids in middle school and high school who are completely inexperienced and have at their disposable some means of obtaining booze. The most fucked up stuff I've ever witnessed regarding alcohol has happened to kids at 16. Not everyone's family teaches them to appreciate alcohol correctly at a young enough age, and many are left to experience it with their peers.
Like alcohol, driving takes years to gain experience with (duh). However, I don't think they have similar solutions.
The drinking age should be lowered, to try and culture young people and more OPENLY gain experience with alcohol under better supervision and guidance.
Driving is clearly not the same kind of activity, and the rising number of teenage accidents have NOTHING to do with alcohol. They have to do with inexperience but more importantly, the fact that kids nowadays have more at their disposal than they can handle, and what's worse, they lack the judgement to maintain control and learn safely.
The drinking age needs to be LOWERED. LOW LOW LOW LOWWWWWWWWW. I honestly don't think there should be a drinking age at all, but we'll say at least 16 for developmental reasons.
I like Atrios's plan with making kids wait til they're older to drink and/or drive. I think the important part of this idea is that THE DRIVING AGE NEEDS TO BE RAISED. There I said it. Massachusetts, I believe, is looking into raising theirs right now, and I must agree that this is the right way to go. I'd say you shouldn't be able to learn any earlier than 17, and maybe even not get licensed til 18.
So many kids today are not ready to drive, but we have more cars than ever, and the priveledge isn't even viewed as such anymore by most kids.
The lessons I learned from my bad experience with alcohol is that it takes time to figure out how to drink responsibly, or at least respectably.
Driving however, was something many 16 year olds are not ready for, and no amount of experience at that age can compensate for the decision making skills that are unvailable to most teenagers.
Interesting idea, but I'd guess that all the 18 year olds would choose to drive (well, to keep driving) and just drink anyway, like they do now. It's not that hard to pull off if you're willing to be remotely smart about it. I guess this framework provided with stiffer penalties for MIPs would have more of an effect, but I'm not especially crazy about the idea of slapping slapping big fines or any jail time on college kids for drinking. And it also seems like it would end up getting enforced very disproportionately on poor people. Especially if you aren't college bound, the ability to drive could mean the difference between making a living wage and not. But you're also in more settings with adults who are of age, and probably have the type of job that really requires one to drink, and that just seems like a recipe for bad.
In all of this, I'd want to have a better idea of the distinction between teen drivers and inexperienced drivers in general. For example, my state, like many, instituted a graduated drivers license program, where you are not allowed to drive in certain circumstances (at night, on highways) until you are more experienced. However, it *only* applies to teen drivers. I suspect that for those factors, there's not much difference between teenagers and other people learning to drive. I wonder the same thing about drinking and driving statistics (and if older new drivers are much better on drinking and driving, then that would pretty much prove the point that being an experienced drinker is what matters, not being a certain age.)
I also think drunk driving laws are far too lenient in this country.
This is all pretty idealistic thinking here in general because we all know none of this is happening anytime soon.
But, I think that the way energy and transportation are heading, teenagers ought not to need cars. Public transportation is one thing America is lacking in that other countries have. Also, not having the responsibility of owning a car would eliminate the cyclic necessity of many teenagers starting work earlier in high school when they need to be focusing more on getting an education.
For the many who don't have that luxury, again, public transportation needs to become something that isn't looked down upon any longer.
While I agree with the general sentiment of most of the arguments for lowering the legal drinking age, 21 wasn't just some dumb number plucked out of the nether-realm.
There have been numerous physiological and other scientific studies which show that when a person drinks, the frontal lobes are the first to be affected. The frontal lobes also happen to be where 'recently learned' skills are stored in the brain. Recently-learned, in psych-world, is anything that's less than 5 years old. The intent behind setting the drinking age to be 21 is that it happens to be 5 years after most people learn to drive (16 years in the US).
Like Atrios sez, the actual effect may not be all that much. But there should be some acknowledgement that 21 is based on scientific thinking, not just some number pulled out of nowhere.
It is not that difficult for a 15 year old and it is a trival matter for anyone 18 or older to obtain alcohol.
A common attitudes at that age are "why drink if not to get drunk" and "don't worry I'm a good driver".
What we have is selective prohibition that does not work any better than general prohibition. We also have the problem that people can make money providing alcohol to those who cannot drink legally (those underage or on parole/probation).
I agree with the drinking license or driving license thing, but I think the minimum age for being able to have both should be 65.
I remember being 18 to 21. It was not that trivial to obtain alcohol. This typically involved going over to a friend's house and annoying him until he got off the couch, got dressed, and got in our car for a ride to the beer store. We had to endure all kinds of jokes and worse, buy the older friend something he wanted. So we might be out an hour of time (or more) and twenty bucks to get a six-pack of Beck's Dark.
Yeah, younger people can get alcohol, but it requires a greater outlay of time and cash. Plus there is all this sucking up to older men.
I even suspected as a late teenager that the 21 age was selected so that older guys had a greater advantage with younger girls. I don't know how many 18 yo girls are that much more impressed by 21 yo boys just because those men can buy them wine coolers.
yea, there'd definitely be a powerful 21-yr old male lobby if we ever started talking about lowering it again :/
our only hopes of seeing it done might be a reinstatement of the draft!
Setting the drinking age at 21 just seems calculated to encourage binge drinking in colleges. About half the undergraduate population is old enough to purchase, so there is plenty of to go around. However, it's just enough of a nuisance for the underaged that they have an incentive to drink as much as possible, when it's available.
Getting plastered on the weekend just isn't that much of an event when you can go down to the liquor store any time you want.
A drinking age of 19 would be less arbitrary. That would make it legal for nearly all college students, illegal for nearly all high school students. Which is where most of us draw the line anyway.
As for reducing the amount of teen driving: hey, let's reduce the amount of driving, period. Unfortunately I didn't have much of a choice when I was 16. My school was 2 miles away, the nearest movie theater was 10 miles away, and we had no public transportation. I was a prisoner in my home until I got my driver's license. It sucks, but I didn't choose to live where I lived. I was 16.
I mostly lurk here, but your post got me to delurk:
I looked into this and other issues involving teen driving and spoke to quite a few experts on the issue at the federal and state highways, state health department and traffic analysts at a couple of universities. If I wasn't a lazy blogger I'd go into details, but the real need to decrease all teen fatalities is considerably longer requirements of a parent, guardian or other adult riding with beginning drivers. The average state requires like 40 hours of adults riding with their 16-year-old kids in the cars. However, states don't pass what the experts recommend of 120 hours of adult supervision because parents are too lazy or busy to ride that long in the car with their teen. When studies were done with kids with that level of supervision at the beginning of their driving careers they remained safer drivers not just when 16, but at 17, 18 and up as compared to the general population. If I recall, they also had lower incidents of teen drinking and driving. Because you give young drivers a good foundation, they don't develop bad habits as quickly. The other thing that would save lives is a requirement that teens 16 and 17 were not allowed to have teenage passengers in their vehicle, particularly at night, because they can't handle the distractions. Again, most states won't pass laws prohibiting that because then the oldest teen isn't allowed to chauffer the other kids to events and the parents have to parent. So it's just easier for the states to pass a blanket 21 drinking requirement than to actually do the things that would cut down teen fatalities even more drastically.
So don't expect them to eliminate something that allows the lawmakers to pretend they care.
Could have figured you'd want drunken teens on the road, Black. How low can you go?
While I don't have any problem with the anti-DUI laws, the general decrease in fatality is true for other age groups as well. Over that period, the auto industry has learned how to make safer cars. In addition, there has been a society-wide decrease in DUI. So it would be heard to tease out a strong connection in the age-21 laws.
It's not like we don't have over a million people rotting in prison getting sodomized right now because they broke some stupid prohibition on drugs yet you panty wastes are all bitching about 18year old kids getting to drink when they want to?
Kids cause more wrecks than anyone.
16 year olds cause more wrecks than 18 year olds and they cause more than 21year olds.
Are you all a bunch of old drunks who exist only to drunken some 18yrd and get them home?
You're a big bunch of white douches who NEVER have ANYTHING to say about the class war, you only want the jack booted fascists to give the orders that YOU want. You people make me sick. You're so up on sticking it to the wife of a former presidential candidate that you're willing to EMPOWER america's worst killer while turning a blind eye to the REAL problem of prohibition going on. You bunch of douchocrats.
You're the reason we lost the whitehouse, you poeople have ZERO f'ing focus.
I like the driving vs. drinking ID. I've always felt a more "stepped" approach would work.
Drinking age of 14
Driver's permit at 16 (need a licensed driver in car)
Driver's license at 18
Buying (alcohol) age of 21
With the avaiability of public transportation these days I don't think a delayed driver's license age would be an issue either.
I'd propose the option for the under-21 crowd to choose between a drinking license and a driving license.
Seriously? I think they'd all choose a driving license and continue drinking as now.
I always thought 16 to drink and 18 to drive made good sense, kids could have two years of drinking under their belts before driving and hopefully be a lot more responsible and not need to sneak around to drink (which usually requires a car) - the biggest problem with this might be that in some places kids need to drive themselves and their siblings to school. This could be addressed with some kind of daytime only learner's license.
Well thank god they can still abuse prescription drugs and drive. I WANT more young people wired on SSRIs and Adderal behind the wheel. That will just thin out the herd for college admissions a little more.
You may think this is ironic. It is not. I fully support young people having the ability to demonstrate their lack of control thereby offing themselves.
Atrios:
You mention that it would be good to reduce all teen driving. Actually, that has been on the decline for about a decade. Teenagers are getting their licences later and later. I do not know why. But correlate that with the fatality stats you cited, and it looks like deaths went down when the drinking age went up, but have not gone down much as the teen driving age has gone up. And you only cited stats back to 84; the drinking age was raised nationwide in 81.
I think it's also likely that people who start drinking later are not as likely to become heavy users of alchohol. In that case, the decline in fatalities in the over-21 age set could be partially credited to the higher dinking age.
I view this as a blatant sales pitch designed to attract more under 21 bloggers, among other things.
If a choice was to be provided I think it should be the options of:
1) drinking license and sign up for selective service at 18
2) selective service registration (and therefore draft eligibility) is deferred until age 21 if no drinking license is obtained before 21st birthday
Of course this can only be successful is meaningful underage drinking infractions are enforced and the punishments have some sting to them.
I have always thought it unbelieveable that we can send out kids off to die in some war but yet tell them they are too young to drink alcohol.
Keep it at 21,if the under 21's want to drink they are gonna drink anyway.Why encourage them?I know when I was eighteen,nothing stopped me.
the kids would take the driver's license and then continue to drink illegally.....like high schoolers drink illegally now.
Your statistics are misquoted. The total drop in fatalities is not from 82,000 to 44,000; it is from 82 per million to 44 per million population.
Here's another data point supporting a lowered drinking age: teen drunk driving fatalities fell in *Canada* during the same time period that they fell in the US, even though Canada's drinking age stayed the same. That suggests the cause was better education or cultural awareness, not the age restriction. (Which makes sense, because we all know it's not that hard for most 18 year olds to get alcohol.)
You're a big bunch of white douches who NEVER have ANYTHING to say about the class war, you only want the jack booted fascists to give the orders that YOU want. You people make me sick. You're so up on sticking it to the wife of a former presidential candidate that you're willing to EMPOWER america's worst killer while turning a blind eye to the REAL problem of prohibition going on. You bunch of douchocrats.
Ryan why do you have to group us all in together like that?
Getting rid of the so-called War on Drugs is a much higher priority for me, as I understand that its really the War on Poor. This is something that has to be dismantled at the FEDERAL LEVEL.
I'm running for State Representative in my home of New Hampshire. One thing I can control is the legal drinking age, and also driving laws. A girl I knew from high school just crashed and died two weeks ago today, after having just reached her 16th birthday.
Sorry if I'm not so focused on the War on Poor people right now, but it isn't hitting as close to home, at this point.
Levels of underage drinking in this state have been the highest in the nation. My state also has a major budget crisis and at this point is not funding education as the constitution requires. I would see the lowering of the drinking age as one way to increase revenue for my state, where the Liquor Stores are all state-run.
Do what they do in Europe - make the drinking age 16, and make in damn hard to get a license. In most of the EU, getting a drivers license is hard, and expensive. Generally, people actually study to get a license (I recently had house guests from Germany, and they told me that they had spent ~ 1000 Euro's on classes for their daughter as part of getting her a license, which she got at 19.)
Having had a kid go through teenager-hood, it is clear to me that most kids are ready for driving much before 18.
Of course, the real reason for the drinking age restriction is social control - if you want to see what the Velvet Dictatorship will look like for us, look at how arbitrarily and capriciously the system treats our kids.
Oh, and also note how many of the advocacy groups (which always advocate more police power) get money from the state, in terms of grants. Very convenient.
Duncan, you are just so fucking wrong here regarding lowering the age to drink and drive. Just so fucking wrong. Shame on you and shame on any sycophant who now thinks it's a great idea because his favorite blogger supports it.
All this time, money and effort wasted on drinking and driving. Drinking and driving is a very popular whipping boy for any politician. But in reality alcohol is involved in a small fraction of all car accidents. On average alcohol is involved in only 5% of all car accidents so it is hardly the big problem our worthless suck ass politicians have made it out to be. And as usual posts by Anonymous are just stupid and mindless. Go get a life Anonymous you punk ass bitch!
yea learn to read, Anonymous you ass clown
Atrios wasn't advocating drinking and driving OR making licensing any more expedient for us teenagers
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