Happy New Year, or The Drinking Age

In honor of the New Year's festivities, I have a proposal.  Let's follow the tradition of some European countries and get rid of the drinking age.  Completely. 

In this country, we make drinking far too important as a rite of passage.  How often do we hear of young people dying because they tried to drink 21 shots of liquor for their 21st birthday?  Even once is way too many times.  And many more attempt it and survive, "merely" being seriously sick, vomiting and passing out before they succeed in poisoning themselves to death. 

Teens find drinking to be an act of rebellion because it's not allowed.  And because they drink on the sly with peers, they don't learn how to manage drinking, or how to drink sensibly.  It's too easy for them to get into drinking contests, or to try to get girls drunk enough to have sex with them, often without the girls remembering much.

I heard recently that there's a proposal to raise the drinking age to 25.  The idea is apparently to widen the gap between driving age and drinking age.  We're going the wrong direction, folks.

I was in Italy some years ago with a large group of extended family and friends.  Several of my cousins on this trip were not of legal drinking age in the US, but Italy has no age limit.  These cousins were far more thrilled at being able to order a glass of wine with dinner than they were with the drinks themselves.  In fact, they rarely made it halfway through their glass.  But they felt so grown-up being able to order a drink - that was way more important than drinking it. 

While we were in Rome, the Roman soccer team won the national soccer competition, and thousands of people rushed out into the streets spontaneously to celebrate.  Quickly the piazzas filled with celebrants, many of whom were drinking.  I went out and partied with them till 1 am.  Yes, they were noisy, but no one threw up or passed out and no one broke bottles or trashed the piazzas.  I never felt unsafe surrounded by thousands of celebrants.  They were happy, but not out of control.

I talked to one of the guys there, and commented on how I never saw any Italians get drunk and out of control.  He laughed, and he said "When your first drink is as a child at the dinner table with your parents and grandparents, you grow up learning moderation."

Comments

[Timo Kokko]

My goodness. I find myself in the very strange position of agreeing with Aubrey.

The drinking laws are equivalent to the "war on drugs" where we are not serious about that either. Most people wink at 16 year olds "just having a beer," but their life gets ruined if they get caught drinking and driving, even if they don't have an accident. Understand I don't condone driving after drinking, but we have gotten irrational with our treatment of people picked up even if they are not impaired. We should end it.

[Bob Johnson]

I used to think logic belonged in the male domain, but after reading both yours and timo's pieces...I have reversed my opinion. Good job Aubrey.