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Get off my lawn!
Jooooosh:
As a highschooler, i think the drinking age of 21 is pretty ridiculous, but it doesn't affect me that much. The only time I drink is at parties, and its fairly easy to get some bottles of vodka and some beer, along with punch and orange juice for mixing.
The reason for drinking, at my school atleast, is because of the social effects of alcohol. It does make relatively lame parties fun, especially when there are just a few people. Peer pressure isn't that big of an issue, more than a few people dont drink at the parties and no one really cares, though this could be different with different people.
As well, we have a German exchange student, and apparently you can buy beer at 15 there. Hes 16 and is probably one of the more responsible drinkers at the parties. Don't know if that means that a younger drinking age instills a sense of respect for alcohol(a theory I subscribe to), instead of the more common american teenage attitude of 'lets just get fucked up', which i will admit is also fun.
A Wet Helmet:
I returned to the continental US when I was 26. Prior to that, I moved a lot and spent quite a bit of my youth in Europe. One of my stints back in the US came when I was 17 after having just come back from Germany. It was, I tell you, damn odd to be legal to drink one day, and illegal the next. (Of course, it was nice to be able to drive again)
Though I'm not sure I would say that the younger drinking age made me significantly more responsible a drinker (I still got shit faced and acted like an idiot regardless of what continent I was on) there was certainly less pressure to binge in Germany than there was in the U.S.
I believe I probably drank more often --ok, let's admit it, daily-- in Germany, but because there wasn't any concept of "we might not be able to do this tomorrow" there wasn't any incentive to drink as much as I possibly could. There were certainly nights I drank like a pledging frat boy over there, but it was generally a more relaxed attitude. Have a beer or two after school, have a beer at dinner, and maybe three or four drinks in the evening. As soon as I got back to the states the concept was "Let's get two cases of beer and get out the beer bong". Because even though I quickly made friends with a guy who was 21, there was still this culture that we were doing something we weren't supposed to, so we better do it to excess... Tomorrow may never come.
So where does that put me on the concept of drinking age? Honestly, I don't know. I would agree with the general concept that if you can vote and serve in the military, you should be able to buy a beer. So is the drinking age in the US too high or the voting/service age too low?
Amaroq:
--- Quote from: Linds on 11 Mar 2008, 17:49 ---I drank out of curiosity, not because of rebellion. I was all like, "huh, why do people like this stuff? *sip* No really, why do people like this stuff?"
--- End quote ---
Ha! My parents did that to me on purpose. They had, sitting in the fridge, some boxed wine that had probably gone bad, and a couple cans of the cheapest nastiest beer. I remember, maybe age 12 or 13, stealing one of the cans of beer with a friend of mine. We each took like two sips, and couldn't stand it - we poured the rest down the toilet! The worst part about it was worrying about getting in trouble for something we'd really hated!
Talked to my dad about it years later, having thought that we'd gotten away with it, and he confessed that, no, they knew we'd done it, and had gotten a good laugh imagining what our faces must have looked like. :laugh:
Edit, to avoid double-posting, and in reply to A Wet Helmet:
The "pressure to binge-drink" bit is what's hardest about lowering the drinking age now that its high: I'd worry about, at least for a time, that pressure leading to a wave of binge drinking amongst those for whom it was illegal.
"Duuuude! We're legal now! Let's get wasted to celebrate!"
I'd expect that to taper off in time, but the initial wave of it .. *shudder*
A Wet Helmet:
I celebrated my 21st birthday in Germany. It was a Sunday, and I don't think I drank anything. Had I been in the states, there is no doubt (based on the number 21st birthday parties I attended) I would have drank myself nearly comatose.
calenlass:
My great-great-something uncle used to keep a still. I do not remember when I had my first alcohol. (Sometime after I was 10-ish, I guess.)
I can remember when I started drinking socially, though, and it wasn't so much social drinking as curiosity about why everyone else was, and if the stuff they were drinking (rum, I think, was my first proper drink) was as good as whisky. Some of it was, some of it wasn't. I made myself sick enough the morning after at one weekend party when I was 13 on rum and cheap beer that I decided I wouldn't do that again. 7 years later, I have pretty much held to it.
I don't really have any opinion on the drinking laws, except that if people thought more like I do they wouldn't need to be as harsh, but since they don't, whatever. One thing I do question is how in the States you cannot take your kid into a restaurant and buy them a beer or a glass of wine with their dinner, even though you as their parent sanction such reasonable, measured consumption.
Also, losing my beloved Integra to a drunken shit ass bastard who tried to fucking drive away doesn't change my opinion on the drinking age laws, but it makes me want harsher punishments for driving under the influence of anything. Fucking shitcock.
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