"drinking age" news and stories

I know it's a perennial question, debated endlessly since the beginning of time. Well maybe since 1984 when President Reagan and Congress forced states to raise the legal drinking age to 21 by threatening to withhold federal highway funds.

In an article from the Economist.com, I learned that there is a recent movement to lower the legal drinking age in some states. The argument is that the age limit doesn't work anyway, and it also creates a lack of respect for law because it's not really enforceable.

I personally think that it's a parental responsibility to teach children responsible drinking habits. There should be some kind of age limit, but I think that it should be something more reasonable. After all, you can be tried as an adult at a young age in many states, so why do you have to be 21 (legally) to have a drink? What do you think?

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Something tells me parents aren't going to be thrilled with this.

College students in Amsterdam have invented powdered alcohol, and they say that the product can actually be sold to minors (16 and over) because it's not in liquid form. Not sure if that would fly in the U.S, but one of the inventors bluntly admits that they are "aiming for the youth market," and Germany and other countries have already had that controversy over alcopops. I can see this coming to the U.S. and causing a controversy too.

The product is called Booz2Go, of course.

According to consumer groups, the beer industry's standards for advertising are not high enough. And they're not talking about their propensity to appeal to the lowest common denominator by showing belching contests and bikini-clad women. The New York Times reports that critics are upset because they do not feel the industry is abiding by their own standards and is still producing ads which are seen by children.

The industry self regulates via the Beer Institute, which creates guidelines and monitors advertising content. Their standard is to only air beer ads when no more than 30 percent of the audience is under the legal drinking age. Steven Rowe, attorney general of Maine and vocal critic, stands firm in his believe that the standard should be lowered to 15 percent. Critics also feel that the Beer Institute's advertising code, which state ads "should not portray beer drinking before or during activities, which for safety reasons, require a high degree of alertness or coordination," is being violated in ads. To support their "unsafe activities" claim, fingers are pointed at the ad aired during the Olympics that showed men drinking beer while pretending to be fixing their roofs, though beer companies stated that commercials obviously meant as parody were exceptions to the "unsafe activities" code, not violating any standards.

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