I was doing some cnn.com headline reading this morning when I stumbled upon this interesting commentary (link above), about the legal drinking age in the US. The most fascinating thing in the whole article to me is this…
“The United States is one of only four countries — the others are Indonesia, Mongolia and Palau — with an age as high as 21. All others either have no minimum age or have a lower age, generally 18, with some at 16.”
Pretty bizarre huh? I always view America as being overly progressive, but seeing this really weirds me out. I agree with the author that this drinking age promotes “pregaming” and “binge” drinking, and it’s really bothering to me to see statistically how much worse “binge” drinking is here than in countries with lower legal drinking ages. If you keep telling a kid not to take a cookie from the cookie jar, he’s going to find a way and get all the cookies he can once he’s figured out a loophole, just because he wants what he can’t have. I’ve met plenty of people here in the states that were raised in Europe who aren’t at all “enamored” by alcohol, and it makes sense to me that their views were shaped that way because it wasn’t a big deal. It’s like sitting at a dinner table and choosing a sprite over a dr. pepper. Lastly, it really does bother me that teens can go fight an “adult” war but aren’t allowed to have “adult” drinks.
Anyway, read the article. It’s pretty interesting.
I was doing some cnn.com headline reading this morning when I stumbled upon this interesting commentary (link above), about the legal drinking age in the US. The most fascinating thing in the whole article to me is this…
“The United States is one of only four countries — the others are Indonesia, Mongolia and Palau — with an age as high as 21. All others either have no minimum age or have a lower age, generally 18, with some at 16.”
Pretty bizarre huh? I always view America as being overly progressive, but seeing this really weirds me out. I agree with the author that this drinking age promotes “pregaming” and “binge” drinking, and it’s really bothering to me to see statistically how much worse “binge” drinking is here than in countries with lower legal drinking ages. If you keep telling a kid not to take a cookie from the cookie jar, he’s going to find a way and get all the cookies he can once he’s figured out a loophole, just because he wants what he can’t have. I’ve met plenty of people here in the states that were raised in Europe who aren’t at all “enamored” by alcohol, and it makes sense to me that their views were shaped that way because it wasn’t a big deal. It’s like sitting at a dinner table and choosing a sprite over a dr. pepper. Lastly, it really does bother me that teens can go fight an “adult” war but aren’t allowed to have “adult” drinks.
Anyway, read the article. It’s pretty interesting.
love,
Mark