Well it sucks. It's a law that nobody adheres to. Any such law is inherently a bad law.
Ask a current student anything
- Thread starter fgzy
- Start date
Nobody? Maybe not a lot of 18-20 year olds if they can get someone to give it to them but most everyone else does.
This isn't true. Drinking is starting earlier and earlier, its at the point now where most freshmen in high school have. And if the group of 18-20 years old isn't following it and that's the primary target of the law ( college age) then MOST people aren't following it.
Once again you're talking about a specific age group, not the population as a whole.
I don't like the drinking age law for a couple reasons: (1) because it is a law that is widely ignored and all such laws are bad news and (2) because it's seeking to address a specific problem - drinking and driving - with an overly generalized solution.
If they want to solve drinking and driving, solve that specific problem. We shouldn't create a law that treats all 18 - 20 year olds like children because some 18 - 20 year olds behave like children. It's not like an immature 20 year old magically becomes mature at 21, or 22 or 25. Instead, we're punishing, sometimes severely, young adults for drinking alcohol - a thing that is legally permitted in our society.
It's yet another case of how we're treating young adults like children and then complaining when they behave like children. If you want mature young adults, stop treating them like children when they are 14 and by 18 they will have made and learned from some mistakes and will have matured. If you don't start that process until 21, then you'll have 25 year old children.
The law is irrelevant for anyone over the age of 21 though, so the only people it actually effects are those under that limit. So the majority population that should be effected by the law doesn't follow it.
Kids in HS today are drinking just as much as kids in HS were drinking 20-30 years ago, if not more.
And in college, the only kids that aren't drinking are kids that don't drink and likely will never drink much. Any college kids that wants to drink, drinks. They just keep it quiet, more or less, to avoid getting caught.
The "population as a whole" is irrelevant here, because the minimum drinking age law does not apply to the entire segment of U.S. population at or over the age of 21. And it can also be argued that it does not apply to those, say, ages 1 to 13, whom mostly aren't and certainly shouldn't be drinking anyway so as not to adversely affect growth/development.
So if the law is widely flouted by those ages 14-20, whom the law is most nearly geared to (and it most certainly was by a vast majority of friends and classmates in high school and college), then it is at best a misguided and at worst a useless law.
I don't think your last paragraph is true. I remember as a lad (pre-Vietnam) that New York had a drinking age of 18, but that the surrounding states were 21. So there would be a lot of driving across state lines, and as you can imagine, a fair number of accidents, some very tragic in loss of life to kids who had their lives in front of them. The surrounding states never did lower their drinking ages. New York raised its to 21 after the Supreme Court upheld an act by Congress that said that states with a drinking age of less than 21 would be barred from receiving most Federal highway funds.
I think you are thinking of voting age. That did go down from 21 to 18 during the latter part of the Vietnam war. It has proven less important than it was thought to be because young people generally do not turn out to vote. (BTW, giving women the vote was also expected to radically change politics, and it didn't, even though female turnout rate is at least as high as male).
Too unpredictable, and a court might well consider the alley an attractive nuisance (a term that's not used much anymore). Also imagine, heaven forbid, a sexual assault -- or at least what is charged to be a sexual assault. It would be a tremendous black eye for the university. I sympathize with the students a lot in this case, but I understand why the administration (if that's who it was) wanted to end the Alley.
Just a personal opinion but it seemed that they happened around the same time. The theme was I can be drafted but can't vote or buy a drink. I was in my early 20's at the time so maybe it wasn't how I remember it
New York's age 18 law was of long standing. It wasn't any kind of reaction to Vietnam. And, as I say,most states stuck to age 21.
The drinking age in New Jersey went up to 21 when I turned 18 because I missed it by 2 days in 1980! the law took effect on January 1st that year. I was still able to get into most bars because the guys checking ID's felt bad for me and frankly, we didn't have social media and the internet Then...
So that's why they raised it! Pretty spiteful and personal on NJ's part. I always thought it was the insurance lobby.
I turned 18 the year before and just made it :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye: They raised the drinking age over the next few years back to 21 so I was always legal. Must admit I did some dumb stuff back then. On the other hand, if I had Uber, Lyft, etc. as options like people do today, I would have definitely been taking advantage of those services.
Who didn't? Want to make it clear even tho I'm not one to party and may go months between having any kind liquor, I'm in no way opposed to drinking. Just think we need to be realistic about what the situation is.
hey, now that I check Google, you guys are right. NJ did in fact lower its drinking age to 18. But the source says that it only went up to 19 in 1980.
Good points.
As for the term "attractive nuisance" not being used anymore, I still use it a lot; mostly when talking about potential future ex wives. Or, heaven forbid, a potential future non-ex wife :eek:.
They talk about me that way too, sort of. With me though, they drop the "attractive" part.
You have to think studies about underage drinking are about as accurate as studies about penis size.
It was raised to 19 in '82 not '81. I started School in fall of '81 and was 19 in May of '82 and legal. grandfathered in at 20 & 21.
Ok, then I was right when I told my friend they raised it to 19 first then 21. Don't recall it being 20, But either way, missed out when it went up in 1980.
I think 19 is a fair age to lower it to now. So dumb its 21!
Latest posts
-
-
-
Basketball Rutgers Basketball wins second straight, downs USC 95-85
- Latest: letterhead6
