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January 04, 2009 11:18 PM UTC

A realistic liquor law

  • 10 Comments
  • by: DavidThi808

I have 3 daughters ages 16 – 25 so I know what actually goes on in terms of High School & College age drinking. And it isn’t pretty. For a lot of kids the weekends (and for some weekdays) are a continuous drunken haze.

Now we have tried our present system for 15+ years where the drinking age is 21 and we try to shut down all underage drinking. And what has it gotten us? More kids drinking, kids drinking more, and kids drinking harder liquor.

So lets try something new. Because continuing to do the same thing and expect different results is a form of insanity.

Children are going to do stupid things. Forbidden things will hold additional allure. We can try to mitigate this, but we can’t ignore it.

So we want a combination of effort that points them in the direction of least danger through a combination of what is legal, and what is only a little bit illegal.

At age 18 you can join the Army, got to Iraq, and die for your country. But take a drink of beer and you’re busted. And we want to ease kids into drinking (not get them all to drink – get those that are going to drink to start small).

Item 1: Upon graduation from High School you get a driver’s license that is marked showing you can purchase beer & wine (up to a specified alcohol limit that is greater than 3.2). So from graduation to 21 you can legally drink beer & wine.

This will redirect a lot of kids. If the barriers to getting whiskey is the same as for beer, if the penalty is the same, might as well get the whiskey. But if beer & wine is legal, that’s the easy route.

This also gives colleges a way to control student drinking. At present it’s all driven underground because it’s all illegal. Switching to a system where beer is ok lets the colleges work with that.

Item 2: Underage drinking of beer & wine is a minor misdeameanor. But underage drinking of anything harder means loss of their driver’s license for 6 months (or delay of first getting it).

A driver’s license is freedom for high school kids. If whiskey risks the license while beer does not, then if they are going to drink underage, they will select that one that doesn’t risk their freedom.

Will this eliminate all problems? No. But will it make the problem a lot smaller – I believe so. I definitely think it’s worth trying.

And yes this could risk Federal funds tied to the 21 limit. But in today’s political environment getting a waiver to try something like this is probably doable. Because everyone knows the present system is ineffective.

Should we lower the age for beer & wine?

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10 thoughts on “A realistic liquor law

  1. god knows it would have been easier to buy my own jug of wine before I was 21 than waiting for someone else to do it for me.  🙂

    But really, who’s going to enforce it?  When we would drink in HS, the concern wasn’t getting caught by the authorities, it was getting caught by our parents.  The cops never entered into the equation.  The only people who did get caught did something monumentally stupid like load 8 kids into their Civic and get pulled over for being too young to drive around their peers (one of our goofy CA laws…).

    Shift to college, the only time people get caught is when they get MIP’s from the oh-so-bored Boulder PD.  Having avoided getting any before I was 21, I feel confident saying you have to be pretty dense to fall into the arms of the officer Barbrady  (South Park reference, anyone?).

    So, it’s fine if you want to allow certain things and change the punishment for others…but who’s going to enforce it?  From the angle of more slowly “teaching” kids how to drink I think it’s good.  But the Police don’t stop underage drinking now, would they start if we change the drink in an 18 y/o’s hand?

      1. I had to take the alcohol class too, but it was b/c we got caught drinking in a dorm room.  The police weren’t involved…just an overzealous RA.    

  2. Correct me if I’m not reading it correctly, but it sounds like you’re assuming that whiskey (or other hard liquors) will get you more drunk than beer or wine. Anyone who enjoys an adult beverage on occasion can attest to the fact that if you drink 10 beers, you’re just as much of a danger as if you drank a few Jack and Cokes. Beer and wine are just as likely to make you incredibly intoxicated (and when consumed together, it will also give you a pretty nasty hangover.)

    Unless there’s some sort of limit on quantity, as well as alcohol content, then you might as well make all alcoholic drinks legal when kids turn 18.

    Granted, most alcohol poisoning cases are from hard liquor, but if you let 18 year-olds buy a keg, the same risks exist.

    I do think the age should be lowered though.

  3. The decision is effectively national due to highway funding.  I would favor decoupling, so that, at least the issue gets debated on the merits.  This is an issue with local impact appropriately decided at a state level.

    We are just about to abolish the abomination that is called 3.2 beer in Colorado by allowing regular beer to be sold in grocery stores, and there is no reason to restore it.  Alcohol is alcohol is alcohol.  The only differences are taste and customary portion size.  People don’t serve bourbon by the pint.  The point of an earlier drinking age is to normalize drinking, not to create a 3.2 beer chugging culture on college campuses again.

    Despite the fact that I, like every other kid, loved getting a driver’s license in mid-high school, the numbers showing that a higher driver’s license age dramatically reduces traffic deaths is pretty convincing.

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