Quote:
Originally Posted by Ironic Mustache
America isn't suddenly going to get better if we drop the drinking age.
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Nothing happens suddenly. It will probably take about 2-5 years for everybody to "get used to". But honestly, part of the reason most of us probably started drinking in high school (or middle school) was because it was "forbidden" and "cool", and the myriad other social influences that go into it. I don't know a single person who wanted to drink but stayed sober until they were 21 on account of the law; not a single one. I've met people who had never been into bars till 21 (myself included) or who were successfully indoctrinated by their parents or religion and didn't start drinking till later (minority), but I reckon that almost everyone on this board drank before they were even 18.
You would do well to remember, IM, that for our parents and the generations before them, in many states, the drinking age
was 18. It didn't change until '84 with the
National Minimum Drinking Age Act:
Quote:
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also called the Federal Uniform Drinking Age Act, was passed on July 17, 1984 by the United States Congress as a mechanism whereby all states would become thereafter required to legislate and enforce the age of 21 years as a minimum age for purchasing and publicly possessing alcoholic beverages. Under the Federal Aid Highway Act, a state not enforcing the minimum age would be subjected to a ten percent decrease in its annual federal highway apportionment.
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Regardless, Beebs has a point in that almost every nation on the planet either doesn't have a legal drinking age at all or it's just 18 years old, and we have to be near the top of countries with severe social problems influenced by alcohol. I don't mean to dumb it down to something as easy as "if we lower it, kids won't care about it as much!" because obviously that won't be a panacea for the entire situation, but I do think that in the long run it would help.