Questioning Society discussion

Lowered? Removed? Raised? Why? Why not?

I think it is good just the way it is or drinking should be banned!

K if you are old enough to die for your country (18) than your old enough to drink. I think 21 is good but i think alcohol is a horrible drug. If alcohol can be legal when there a bunch of alcohol related deaths every year then pot should be legal it kills NO ONE!!!!!!

Gina wrote: "K if you are old enough to die for your country (18) than your old enough to drink. I think 21 is good but i think alcohol is a horrible drug. If alcohol can be legal when there a bunch of alcohol ..."

it kills people

GreenDaisy BlackStem wrote: "Gina wrote: "K if you are old enough to die for your country (18) than your old enough to drink. I think 21 is good but i think alcohol is a horrible drug. If alcohol can be legal when there a bunc..."


Maybe she meant Marijuana?

Marijauna has not killed one person. EVER!


nathan said:
"European countries have a much lower drinking age than the US or none at all. they don't have the problems with binge drinking that we have."

why do you think that is

Nathan wrote: "Some people are not responsible when they drink alcohol and it is therefore harmful. However, people who are responsible shouldn't be punished because there are idiots who don't know how to use it."

So what's to be done then?

"why do you think that is "

Legal =/= cool.

Not anything like prohibition, see how well that worked out. There is this idea to have a breathalyzer in every car, and if you fail, it won't drive.

Having a breathalyzer in EVERY car? I think that is an awful idea.. Its one thing for repeat DWIs but not the general public... some people have a drink with dinner and then drive home...

*edit-yes, if was every car with a previous DUI. tankque.

Gina wrote: "Having a breathalyzer in EVERY car? I think that is an awful idea.. Its one thing for repeat DWIs but not the general public... some people have a drink with dinner and then drive home... "


Well if you just have ONE drink, your BAC shouldn't be high enough for you not to be sober enough to drive, right?

But ya, that would be difficult to have them in every single car. I mean, it sounds like a good idea, just a very hard to accomplish idea.

Only if it becomes a standard feature from now on.

not terribly effective i must say.... My moms' friend had one in her car and she would just get someone else to blow in it... I got a dwi when i was 18... it was horrible! Since then I havent driven drunk. In my state i dont know about any others but they are not there to help you all it is about is the money. 20 years ago if you got pulled over drunk, they'd drive ya home now, you are screwed no second chances no nothing and every kid does it. i hate that they are so hard on first timers and underagers but yet i know people that are on their 3rd or 4th and getting their liscense back Why? so they can do it again and the DMV can make more money... it is so fucked up.

Lauren wrote: "Only if it becomes a standard feature from now on. "

But many people drive older cars. And, as Gina said, you could just have someone else to take it for you.

and i think its kind of infringes on your basic freedoms..... cars coming equipped with one? I mean where does that stop? should we have cars that don't go over the speed limit? Or perhaps a car that won't drive because your not a licenced driver? It's wrong to drink and drive but your car not starting because it thinks you should't be driving? I dono just my opinion....

i think the drinking age should be 21, like it is because there is a lot of drinking-and-driving accidents.

Gina wrote: "and i think its kind of infringes on your basic freedoms..... cars coming equipped with one? I mean where does that stop? should we have cars that don't go over the speed limit? Or perhaps a car th..."


Why do they make cars that go over the speed limit?

Because fast cars are friggin awesome, I drive one myself & I speed, I enjoy it and It's a Speed LIMIT not restriction lol.

Milana, I agree with you but people are going to drink and drive whether they are underage or not... More so I think bc they have to sneak around and stuff... i dono...

Gina wrote: "Milana, I agree with you but people are going to drink and drive whether they are underage or not... More so I think bc they have to sneak around and stuff... i dono...


Ya, it's debatable whether lowering the drinking age will make things better or worse.

A little bit of both, i bet

yeah. it will always happen. drinking and driving i mean.

Milana wrote: "yeah. it will always happen. drinking and driving i mean."

But that's a different topic than the drinking age.

It has something to do with the drinking age tho... Ninja, how do you think the drinking age would affect drunk driving?

Gina wrote: "It has something to do with the drinking age tho... Ninja, how do you think the drinking age would affect drunk driving?"


Well it depends. If there was no drinking age, would it increase because it's available to everyone, or would it decrease, since people don't have to sneak it anymore.
So I don't really know.

My parents say that if you give a kid a little bit of wine and are open about they'll go yuck and if you make it a scary forbidden thing when their teeagers as soon as they have access to it they'll abuse it.

It's a basic component of human nature to covet things forbidden.

Ok, I'm from Ireland, a country infamous for drinking. The legal drinking age here is 18.

I agree with YouDontGnomie, if you can die for your country in the USA at the age of 18, you certainly should be allowed to drink alcohol.

And really, the legal drinking age is a moot point. It is not the real problem.I'm pretty sure that in the USA, as in Ireland, loads of people start drinking long before they're legally allowed to. It's peoples attitudes towards alchohol that is the problem.

More attention should be placed on changing people's attitude towards alcohol. Again, dunno what it's like in the USA, but in Ireland, a lot of people set out with the aim to get hammered when they're drinking. They want to get drunk. It's not about enjoying a little bit of alcohol, it's about getting drunk.

Honestly, if you want to drink, you will. No matter your age. It's beyond easy to get alcohol before being twenty-one. Before being eighteen, even.

YoudontGnomie wrote: "Marijauna has not killed one person. EVER!"

Well, probably untrue. Driving when seriously impaired -- for example, right after eating a batch of high-THC (modern hybrid pot) brownies has almost certainly killed people. Also, smoke of any sort is bad for your lungs, and holding smoke in your lungs for the longest possible time maximizes the damage. Bales of marijuana have probably fallen on people's heads before in trucks and killed them.

Finally, plenty of people have been killed over the drug trade in pot or because they were in prison for using or selling pot. Doing illegal things is bad for your health because society's sanctions for those illegal things are bad for your health. I'd say that prison and trade violence are by far the greatest health risks from pot and probably kill people nearly every day.

As Nathan says, pot is arguably less damaging than either cigarettes (or other tobacco products) or alcohol, but almost certainly is not completely harmless. Like anything else, it can be used for pleasure, used to self-medicate occult mental health problems (where it is really a very dangerous drug, as it is probably not the RIGHT medication for a lot of the problems its chronic users in this category have), used as a legitmate medicine, or abused. But if only because it is very illegal, it can ruin lives in the twinkling of an eye. Good law? Bad law? Who cares. Until it is changed, it is the law, and breaking it entails considerable risk.

Back on topic -- I'm for lowering the drinking age to 16, and raising the driving age to 20 or 21. That kills two very useful birds with one stone. Young people can learn to drink (or learn that they are going to have a problem with drinking) long before they get behind the wheel of a car. Also, since stone-cold-sober 16 year olds are enormously likely to have horrible accidents and since the actuarial risk extends until they are on the other side of 19 (really until they are close to 25) it cuts way back on that risk. No problems with drunken teenagers driving, because there are no teenagers driving!

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"and raising the driving age to 20 or 21."

Except kids go away to college before then, and if they live off campus they wouldn't be able to drive anywhere.

Lauren wrote: ""and raising the driving age to 20 or 21."

Except kids go away to college before then, and if they live off campus they wouldn't be able to drive anywhere. "

True. I don't care that much about driving, but the whole college thing is basically forcing me to get a license. You could suggest public transportation - but I live in Southern California. Our public transportation isn't that great.

I'm for lowering the drinking age to 16, and raising the driving age to 20 or 21

Interesting idea. Or, instead of raising the driving age, you could just make the requirements for getting a license a lot harder: longer, stricter probationary periods, required classes, harder tests, etc.

I'm for at least lowering the drinking age to 18, and legalizing weed and taxing the hell out of it. College kids are going to drink. Always have, always will. Trying to stop it is futile, criticizing them for it is hypocritical, and driving it underground and unsupervised is dangerous. When I was in high school, I had a friend whose parents allowed drinking in the house. As a result (and parental requirement) we always had designated drivers, and collected everyone's keys at the beginning of the night. It's hard to imagine that we would have been just as responsible, or that none of us would have ever gotten drunk, had we been forced to go drink in the woods.

Nathan wrote: "legalizing weed and taxing the hell out of it

You bastard!

had we been forced to go drink in the woods.

We all know I did plenty of that. Let's see, Dan never went to the hospital for alcohol p..."

Don't worry. They'd only tax sales.

There is some really interesting stuff in that brain book I was citing on the Personality Disordered Discussion from Hell on brain development and adolescence. Around age 12 your gray matter explodes -- increased learning capacity. Your hormones go crazy -- increased drive to explore, take risks, learn. As you find successful patterns, your white matter (myelin sheaths for the nerves) thicken around the active nerves, "fixing" them and protecting them for the long haul.

In other words, your intelligence and abilities are enormously plastic from age 12 to 25 or so, when the brain kills off the unused gray matter and your capacity to learn goes down to 'normal' again.

This suggests strongly that driving be postponed. "Mature behavior" is typically that white-matter-protected wisdom, and it takes time (and mistakes) to build it. It's better to make mistakes like missing curfew, getting drunk and throwing up all over yourself and your best friend's sofa, failing a class instead of the mistake of driving your friends and yourself into a tree at 60 mph.

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