If they're old enough to get drafted and die for our country, it seems pretty silly to turn around and say they're not mature enough to drink. As with speed limits, I think the best solution to the drinking issue is to pick a reasonable position and then enforce it at a much higher limit. Setting up laws and then letting people break them with impunity 99 times out of 100 encourages all the wrong sort of habits with regard to the law.

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I agree, as long as 18 is the legal age for being tried as an adult, and is the minimum age for military service, the drinking age should be 18 as well.

However, the DUI/DWI laws need to be brought to a harsher level than currently at.

Something along the lines of losing the car you were driving, and have it be auctioned off to pay for something beneficial to the community.

That will make people think twice about doing it, and thing twice about letting someone borrow their car if they might be drinking.

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I think it should be lowered to 18 based on the same thought of the other posters, however, I also think that the media and some people have greatly exaggerated the drunk driving problem. Is it a problem? YES. Should be be against the law to drink and drive? YES. but for god sakes, it's no bigger problem then people running red lights, speeding, acting a fool while sober....

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I also think the age should be 18 for the above-stated reasons, and I think there should be harsher penalties for drunk driving. First offense: permanent, irrevocable loss of driver's license, a large fine, and 1,000 hours of community service. Second offense: a year in prison. Third offense: life in prison, since clearly this is a person who doesn't care whether they kill themselves or the bus full of nuns and orphans they might plow into.

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I live in Alberta Canada where the legal age is 18. Every couple of years some MLA (member of the legislative assembly) will introduce a motion to raise it and it never passes. In most Canadian provinces the legal age is 19. I think that whatever is defined as an adult should be the legal age. A teacher you may see their students in the bar (with the age set at 18) and that's a little weird, but I really don't think it causes many problems. A bar is much safer then an underage kegger at a frat house in most cases.

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Interesting! I've seen the rationale for lowering the legal age from 21 - 18 because the 18 year olds were drinking anyway. Now, 20 years later, the same jurisdiction is contemplating raising the legal age to 21, because the 14 year olds are drinking! More knee-jerk decisions?

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The damage done to society by alcohol abuse is not done by the person (of any age) who has a single drink. It is done by people who deliberately drink to excess and then drive, fight, commit crimes, etc. That is a relatively small percent of people who drink.

There are plenty of 18 year olds who could drink a beer while watching football with friends and cause no harm. There are plenty of adults who would get plastered and then drive. The physical age is less an issue than the maturity level, but maturity can't be tested so we use age as a yardstick and it is unfair to the more mature younger people.

As others have said, the drinking age should be lowered to 18, and crimes perpetuated while people are drunk should be strongly prosecuted. Let people know alcohol is ok to drink in moderation, but it is inexcusable to be out of control and doing damage to others no matter what.

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MM - speed limits can't be strict and the same everywhere because what are safe conditions changes from street to street even block to block. Having a million signs indicating what is safe would be wasteful, excessive, and harmful to traffic flow. Speed limits are intended to be approached with a critical mind, as everything should be approached in life. The most responsible way to change speed limits (and drinking) is to change the environment. If you build a six lane street next to an elementary school, it's absurd to think traffic will go 30 km/h.

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Yep, I think it should be 18, if we have to have one at all. I am a huge proponent of personal responsibility, and am annoyed at laws that are unenforceable and expensive to the taxpayers they are supposed to protect. Parents are the ones that are *supposed* to be educating their kids about right and wrong and moderation, but in our cesspool of modern society I can tell that is not the case.
That being said, I would like to point out that the penalties for DUI (or DWI, different things) vary wildly county to county and state to state. Some areas will give you the equivalent of a slap on the wrist, while others (for a first, non-injurious offense), will treat you as a cash cow and heathen rolled into one.
Now before you all slam me saying I'm pro-DUI, because I'm NOT, I think that there needs to be some uniformity in penalty with the addition of a more common-sense approach to the question of "what is drunk?" You can't tell me that "any is too many" because it ISN'T, for most people of "legal drinking age".
I totally agree with Mathi's argument above. Unfortunately, in our society we do need some sort of yardstick with which to measure right and wrong. I just think the black-and-white mentality with which this subject is commonly addressed is not helpful or productive.
There's my two bucks.

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It's ridiculous that all other adult responsibilities begin at 18 but legal drinking is restricted to 21. Most European countries allow it at 16 without unleashing cultural armageddon.

Drop the drinking age to 18, but keep the driving blood alcohol limit at zero until 21.

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The legal drinking age should stay 21. Brain research has shown that the brain cannot handle alcohol until the age of 21, and that drinking before that just destroys brain cells even if you don't get drunk. Appropriate that I just learned this today at a workshop on the student brain. Also, the brain doesn't totally mature until the age of 21, and the part that takes the longest to mature? Well, that's the part that helps us to make responsible decisions. At 18 it still has years left to mature, which can lead to disastrous results when it comes to alcohol use.

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Amber, I'd like to see some sources to support your argument. The brain can DEFINITELY handle alcohol before the age of 21, as is shown by all the Germans who survived past their 16th year, for instance. Nor does the brain magically become mature the day you turn 21. In fact, there is no definitive way to tell when the brain has "totally matured" because we basically know nothing about the brain. The argument to keep the drinking age at 21 is like the argument against gay marriage: all of the evidence (and common sense) says its hogwash, but for some reason it's still the law.

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i definitely think that the drinking age should be lowered,
i'm from hong kong and the legal drinking age over there is 18 but kids drink alot younger over there because the laws aren't that strongly enforced, at least i'm not sure about what it is now, but when i was growing up it was like that.

i think it's stupid that you can learn how to operate and drive a car before you can learn to understand how your body holds alcohol.. it's like learning to run before you can walk.

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A quick look of countries that have a strict 21 drinking age are: Oman, Pakistan, the United Arab Emirates, Fiji, Kiribati, and the United States of America. This alone should give anyone some pause for thought when debating this topic.

My vote is to lower it but take a hard line on driving under the influence. Clearly there is widespread disregard for this law.

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To me, it's a simpler rehashing of the above comments about military service. A guy survives a day of fighting for his life and the lives of the men around him (not to mention all of us back home) and when he survives the battle, someone's gonna tell him he can't have a beer. That takes stones. It's also a touch heartless.

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Hmm, wow. I strongly agree that the drinking age should go down to 18. I hate that I can sign a legal contact but could be prosecuted for having a glass of wine.

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Personally, I don't care what the drinking age is as long as responsible drinking is enforced. I don't think "nobody follows it anyway" is a good reason to change a law. However, I don't think we have any good reasons for the age to be 21 except history.

I'm a doctor, and I have never heard of the statistics Amber quoted. Sounds like some anti-group gave a lecture at her school. :-)

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Amber, do you have any data at all to back that up? I'm getting my degree in Neuroscience in a week and a half, and pretty much everything you just said was false.

I see no problem with the drinking age being lowered. It was the kids who came to college without having a single drink beforehand that went absolutely insane once they got there. Teach responsible drinking, not abstaining from drinking. Doesn't work for sex, doesn't work for alcohol.

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