Choose Responsibility

I was just watching The Colbert Report on Hulu and John McCardell was on advocating a change in the drinking age. He is pushing for a change in the legal drinking age from 21 back down to 18.

I urge you to go to the website and sign up. I am and always have been a proponent for a change in this law. Prior to my turning twenty-one I was outraged by this law and I still am to this day. Let me get this straight - at the age of 18 you can:

• Cast a vote to elect the leader of the free world
  
• Serve in the military to sacrifice your life in order to "protect" this country
• Sit on a jury and condemn another citizen
• Buy a house
• Get married
• Pay taxes to the government

The list goes on and on - it's essentially all of the legal rights of an adult. Now maybe I'm crazy but if someone is old enough to vote, own a house, have a spouse, and serve in the military shouldn't they be able to have a fucking beer? The simple answer is YES. Of course, it's common sense. You can't have two ages that define what an adult is - it's one or the other.

The fact is drinking in back rooms and basements, away from older more mature drinkers, is much more dangerous then drinking at a bar. I know this first hand since I was the guy having the drinking parties in High School. Everyone would get shit faced beyond anything I have ever seen since then. And I know what you're saying - of course that happened, they're kids. But the fact is just about all of us had much higher tolerances back then. The real reason we got so drunk was because we weren't in an environment that had boundaries. There was no one there to say "I think you've had enough buddy" and that's very important.

Also, the culture has changed since the law was enacted. Drunk driving is no longer a slap on the wrist it's a serious crime. In my dad's day drunk driving was just how you got home after the bar - it wasn't even frowned upon. Bringing along a designated driver has become part of the bar culture since then. The reason these laws were enacted was due to drunk drivers but it didn't really address the problem because EVERYONE used to drive drunk back then. Now it's much less common but the fact is kids are still hurting themselves because they're getting hammered in even more dangerous environments.

I'm happy we finally have a movement starting and we can finally catch up with the rest of the world, which by the way tends to have less alcohol related problems then we do.

Link:
Choose Responsibility

See, we're right there with forward thinking countries like Egypt and Oman...