Lowering the drinking age

[Sal Atticum]

Here's a good site.

http://www.rethinking-drinking.blogspot.com/

[wxgirl]

I dunno I think if you can be 18 and fight for your country you should be allowed to drink as well.  However, when the drinking age is 18 and people have had their licenses for maybe a year or two leads to a lot higher drunk driving (was one of the reasons it got raised back to 21 in MI).  I think before the age could be lowered drunk driving penalties would need to be changed to be very very severe. 

Then again I was one of the kids mentioned in the article I got to have a wine or beer or wine cooler with my meal when I was an older teenager or whenever I wanted one.  Also my paretns drank a lot so I got the opinion I do not want to be that dependant on alkie when I grow up.  So my opinion is probably different than most people on drinking age.

[Sal Atticum]

It's the culture that needs to change,a nd the only way to do that is through individual families.  Denying someone something just because a deal was made between the states and the federal government to raise the drinking age is not the way to go about making people understand what idiots alchohol can turn them into.

[roben.anderson]

I think that with an age that's relatively old (compared to other countries), kids just want it more, and that makes them want to drink more. I think that if we give them a drink when they're really young, they'll learn that drinking tastes bad, or something like that, and wont like it at all. That's a bit extreme, but it'd be something like that. There's less alcoholics in other countries that have lower age limits. I think our culture needs to change as well.

[Sal Atticum]

Having a drink at a young age and not liking the taste of it is not going to turn someone off to alcohol for the rest of their lives.  I didn't like pickles when I was a kid, and now I do. 

The difference here compared with some other countries is that someone stumbling around drunk here is entertainment, whereas somewhere else it might be considered a disgrace.

[netgeer]

i def think the drinking age should be 18 so we can all go out.