Wednesday, June 27, 2007

More on why not to raise the drinking age

Like with most contraband, you limit it by law and it goes underground. Something that's taboo becomes an exciting novelty. There really isn't a lot of binge drinking going on amongst the 18 year old crowd on campuses and in the fraternity houses. How do I know? I was 18, then soon in a fraternity, and a responsible adult, learning from mistakes early on.

And there's a professor guy who agrees. h/t to Vitor for this study...

"McCardell thinks that, on campuses, a drinking age of 21 infantilizes students, encouraging immature behavior with alcohol and disrespect for law generally. Furthermore, an ``enforcement only'' policy makes school administrations adversaries of students and interferes with their attempts to acquaint students with pertinent information, such as the neurological effects of alcohol on young brains. He notes that 18-year-olds have a right to marry, adopt children, serve as legal guardians for minors, purchase firearms from authorized dealers, and are trusted with the vote and military responsibilities. So, he says, it is not unreasonable to think that they can, with proper preparation, be trusted to drink."
Perhaps this is why when a group of us Albertan Canadians would go to the U.S. at 21, we were also able to not only handle our alcohol much better than Americans, due to already having 3 years experience, we were more responsible with it because we knew the consequences already. I even noticed a difference between the 19 year olds in Alberta compared to BC where the legal age is 19.

Why do I keep posting about this subject? Well, the Alberta government is looking into it and in my opinion, if implemented, the law would fly in the face of freedom, as a continued war against fun. So I ask Ted Morton (someone whom I supported in the PC leadership race actually), is there a study on drinking problems "in the high schools"? Because I haven't heard or known there was one.

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