| Home -> March 1997 -> Drinking Age Rant |
The National Parent Teacher association is concerned that alcohol and tobacco companies are targeting children with their websites, and want the FCC to apply the same standards for the companies on the Internet that limit their activities on radio and television.
Needless to say, I have an opinion about that. But for now, I want to take some timeout to talk about one of my favorite inane policies, the legal drinking age.
For those of you who might have stumbled on this site from another part of the world, the United States prohibits those under the age of 21 from purchasing alcoholic bevarges. Let's talk about eliminating this ineffective and dangerous policy.
Ostensibly, the legal drinking age prevents irresponsible drinking by teenagers. I think it does just the opposite and promotes unsafe drinking behavior among young people. By refusing teenagers admission to bars and clubs, we prevent them from seeing how adults socialize and use alcohol as a part of that socialization, not the focus of it. Instead, teenagers fraternize with other teenagers, and since they have gotten the impression that it is solely alcohol that prevents them from adult's nightlife, they make alcohol the sole purpose of their nightlife.
When I was a teenager in high school and in college, I attended plenty of parties where people played Quarters, Anchorman , or any other of a number of drinking games. I don't see people do that at bars very often.
Only bars that cater to mostly younger crowds feature quick alcohol delivery systems such as Jell-O-Shots, Upsidedown Kamikazes, or Slammers. These are extremely common at high school bashes and fraternity parties.
Some reading this will now likely head straight to the Rant Back! anchor below, and point out to me that if teenage drinking were legal, it would only make easier to engage in these drinking games and quick shots. To that, I can only say, so what?
In return for making it easier for teenagers to buy alcohol, and possibly do these same things, we gain the enormous benefit that adults are now serving them. I think an intelligent policy would be to keep the current age limit for buying alcohol at liquor stores, or package stores, but allow anyone to go in a bar and get a drink. This would greatly reduce the amount that teens would serve themselves (or others) at unsupervised blowouts. It would also make it more expensive to drink. What a difference there is between the $5 all-you-can-guzzle-down frat party, and the $3 per drink pricing that any profit-minded watering hole uses.
Naturally, the next set of people who are going to want to put me in stocks in the town square to be pelted with tomatoes are the folks from Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) and Students Against Drunk Driving (SADD). Hear me out before tarring and feathering me. I appreciate your work. Greatly. I believe in taking cabs and public transportation to and from bars, and the use of designated drivers. So please, review what I wrote in those last few paragraphs. I advocate these changes because I think it will reduce the amount teens drink, and place them under the supervision of adults when they do.
Furthermore, not only do I think the current laws encourage teen alcohol abuse, I believe it encourages students to drive drunk. If the laws do not, certainly the current enforcement does. The most popular bars for college students are the ones close to campus- the ones within walking distance. Local authorities target these bars consistently for raids to expose underage drinking, and crack down on lax managers and owners. This practice is extremely effective in forcing these owners to closely monitor patrons for age restriction, or "Card hard", as the phrase goes. Another result is that if students want to go to a bar, they have to drive to go there.
I could go on with this rant, but I think I've made my point. That point might sound a lot like "Treat them like children, and they will, act like it". I think I am saying something slightly different.
Surely I agree with that aphorism, in the following sense. There is a certain novelty in alcohol, and the sooner we treat teens like adults, the sooner that novelty fades. In that sense, the novelty of the websites so many people seem concerned about would also dissolve if we were not so uptight about the subject. But I think the real tragedy is when we conspire to let our children experiment with that novelty all by themselves.
Last Updated: 9 March 1997
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