Poll: Drinking age changing to 21

[Skreeee]

and guns appear to have made all yanks insane and likely to snap given the right circumstances.

Oh come on now. Stop spreading blind stereotypes please. Violent crime in America is way down.

Yet you still have an average of 63000 murders a year. Americans kill more of each other every year than all of the terrorist attacks since 1985 combined

Ill give ya California though. They've done well. Probably because everyone is too broke to afford guns AND bullets.

Maybe it's the beer that's the problem in the states, but in a reverse way. I've had several american beers, and they're all weak, watery swill. Perhaps some decent beer from europe or Oz would improve the situation up north? (And no, Fosters is NOT "Australian for Beer". That shit is just a practical joke we played on the rest of the world)

Just because I am a bit of a beer nerd, I'll jump to America's defense and say that we actually make great beer; just not the cheap stuff that's mass-marketed to the poorer masses (e.g. Bud, Coors, Keystone, etc.). We do however have plenty of microbrewery brands and artisan brews that taste anywhere from pretty damn good to fucking fantastic.

Though I am personally biased towards my own state's breweries the most. Drink local, I say. It has served me well in taste so far.

Also,

-snip-

quit your rant. find a new arguement for this hten the same ol done to death excuse.... and it should be raised to 21

This is lulz worthy for the mere fact that you can't seem to actually generate a sentence yourself, let alone an argument. Just because the argument has been used before doesn't mean it's not valid.

Nice try though. I really love that you gave a good reason as to why the drinking age in Oz should be raised. Oh wait...

 

[Eisenfaust]

well... its a little strange since the government will lose massive amounts of money from alcohol taxes...

someone else made the point "we can smoke, drink, get sentanced to life, die for your country, but they won't let you drink" or something along those lines... add to the mix here that prostitution in australia is barely restricted, and making the drinking age 21 seems even more rediculous and pretty hypocritical...

of course it won't really matter... i have family who loves alcohol as much as i do so i just won't be able to go to pubs which i can easily get over...

 

[Overlord2702]

The whole license hoop jumping bit

I really hate those laws. God dam hoons ruin it for everyone and those that shouldn't have a license still have one after all that BS. We should adopt the car crushing thingy.

 

[DemonicVixen]

To be honest i could not care less about the age being altered. Once i turned 18 my mum has not left the house in a hurry. She prefers being able to make me go out for her drink and tabs. I do not often drink so it does not bother me that i will not be able to buy alcohol anymore

 

[Whoolpurse]

Now I'm happy that I am in DK were the drinking age is 16

 

[mokachill]

fucking stupid idea... ill still drink WAY to much weather its legal or not

 

[Ghadente]

lol, no matter the legal drinking age is, there will always be ways for those under that age to drink. its funny that people still think a legal age will deter them. Plus the whole wanting some more just bc you can't have it thing obviously plays a part as well.

 

[PaulaG]

Well, maybe first year university students will spend less time drinking and more time actually trying to earn their degrees? HA!
In (most) of Canada it's 19...except Quebec of course where it's 18. I'm from Ottawa originally, and all the 18 year olds go across into Quebec to drink...and I know they do that in some States too!

Really, I think 18/19 years olds are crazy enough without needing the booze to go with it! (totally sound like a crotchety old lady, but I'm actually not.....well, not an old lady, anyway )

 

[Terramax]

Now this I think is bulls***...

Push to lift drinking age to 21 in Australia

You can go to war and die at 18, you can smoke at 18, you can vote and pay taxes at 18 but you can't f***ing drink? What kind of logic is this?

Cigarettes aren't drugs that cause the buyer to lose control of their actions, and turn violent after a high consumption rate, taxes are obligatory for good reason, and I personally couldn't care less about the military.

I for one would love to see the age rate of alcohol raised to 21 here in the UK. Because TBH I have rarely met an 18 year-old in the UK that was mature enough to handle alcohol sensibly. In fact I don't often meet people of any age here in the UK that does.

But I understand things are different in Australia. Guess it depends how sensible people in your country are?

 

[omega 616]

Theres also a law in the U.K that allows children as young as 5 have a pint in a beer garden as long as it is bought by somebody old enough to drink.

 

[MGlBlaze]

I'm not really bothered about it; For one I live in Northern Ireland, not Australia. Two, I don't drink anyway.

And for all those who buy into the stereotype; yes, there exist Irish people who don't drink. Big shocker.

I don't know why, I just find that alcoholic drinks all taste like crap.

 

[Nmil-ek]

All I can say is thank fuck I will never live anywhere near or around America/Austrailia that seriously sucks if you dont let people drink then they never get used to it, thye never build up a real tolerance and when they do get drunk they cant gouge their limit or go overboard. Drinking culture is a good thing you learn not to mix, to drink water inbetween, when to stop deprive people of something and they will just overindulge without information and be a danger.

I wish governments would fuck off people dont need godamned babysitting if your 18 your old enough to take the reins of your own life and deal with the consequences of your decisions thats how you mature you make mistakes and learn from them.

 

[Triple G]

It's the same story every time. People who want to get drunk, get drunk. No matter how high the legal age is. People who wanna get high, get high. No matter if drugs are forbidden.

 

[gerrymander61]

You should see our driver's license laws. As a late entry to the wonderful world of driver's licensing (just started down that path) I am at the beginning of a very long road. So I intimately understand the road ahead of me (a road which, it should be noted, each successive government feels it must put extra potholes in to 'look tough with those damn irresponsible kids'):
1)Pass a basic road knowledge test. 30 questions, minimum 25 right to pass. Not very hard. Having passed you can now drive as an L-plate driver. This means you must a) display L plates in the front and rear windows of your car and b) only drive with someone in the passenger side who has had a full license for more than 5 years. You'll be doing this a lot because your next test is:
2)A driving test. This test is notoriously draconian. The vast majority of the testers are old men who've been doing this for so many years (and for whom the paperwork for failing someone is much less than for passing) that they are now crotchety and angry. I've known people who failed the test because they didn't check their blind spot as they turned into the turning lane of a median strip (if that wasn't clear, basically a turning lane for which there could have been no one behind him). You will likely have to take this test 2-3 times, with a waiting list of a few months each time.
Congratulations! You have your Phase 2 Learner's license! What does that entail? You're still on your L plates, which means you still need a 5-year-fully-licensed passenger at all times - and you need to accrue 25 hours behind the wheel, logging the times you did this (minimum 15 minutes each time). There is a 6 month minimum period in Phase 2, so don't expect that you can just breeze through the 25 and move on to P plates. Oh I didn't mention P plates did I? In that case:
3)Finish those 25 hours and pass a computerised hazard perception test and you're on P - provisional - plates. You can drive alone. Well done! But wait - there's still restrictions. For instance: you cannot drive with a BAC (Blood Alcohol Concentration) over 0.00%. (Hell, you could be done for the drinking you did the night before!)
You may not drive between 12am and 5pm unless driving to or from a place of work or study. This means you cannot be the designated driver for a group of drinkers, and you cannot drive yourself home from a party that went any length of time. It's as if the government doesn't even understand how drink driving works.
You will have red-on-white P plates (which must be displayed) for 6 months, and then you will have 'green' P plates for another 18. After this you will finally have:
4)A full license.

(The anger in that rant was at the dills who made this terrible ladder of pain and tedium, not you. Apologies if it seemed that way.)

That actually sounds wonderful. Unfortunately that would never fly in the US because driving is just so essential to the way of life that a system like that would be too inefficient, to slow for people's needs, and way too costly. So we have a 21 drinking age which drastically reduces the number of young people who get into alcohol-related car accidents.

it's a terrible idea. why do people always talk about drunk driving deaths

See, people always forget that when the US raised the drinking age from 18 to 21, the alcohol related car accident rate in young people plummeted, like, dropped substantially. An argument could probably be made for stricter drivers licence requirements, but then people also forget that driving is so integral to the US culture and way of life. It's a function of just how damn big America is and how spread out its people are that cars are far more necessary there then they are in Europe, where most of the criticism for our drinking age comes from.

People also forget that deaths from binge drinking haven't changed at all, and are up amongst certain groups. what raising the drinking age did was take the job of teaching children to drink responsibly away from their parents and gave it to a bunch of equally irresponsible college students. When my father turned 18, my grandparents sat him down in the kitchen and made him get drunk. when he went to college, he understood his limits. When i started drinking, I went to a party and got bombed out of my mind.

that's why there's a large movement among university presidents in the U.S. to lower the drinking age back to 18.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/09/16/mccardell.lower.drinking.age/index.html
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/02/19/60minutes/main4813571.shtml

While it is true that people still have problems related to binge drinking, the number of deaths per year don't even come close to comparing to the number of lives that were saved by that policy. There are many valid reasons to want to have a drinking age of 18, but unfortunately the numbers just don't support the change. As much as I would like to see it happen, I don't see that change coming for a while.

Slightly off topic but....

It's American logic. Which is terrible logic to go on, except for a few of the gems.

If I had said "It's ****** logic. Which is terrible logic to go on, except for a few of the gems," I would be reported so fast and by so many people that the website would crash. Why should this be any different?