Quote From: rae_rayeHi everyone,
I've just read about the Amethyst Initiative and how college presidents would like there to be a discussion concerning the age limit on drinking alcohol.
The legal age in the UK is 18 and this means that our college students are legal to drink when they go off to university. Does this stop or reduce binge drinking? I don't believe so in fact, when I attended university (I went late at 21) there were so many students binge drinking there would often be altercations between the bar staff and the kids!
Here in the UK many people believed that bringing in the "24hr drinking" law would reduce binge drinking and it hasn't. Many people (myself included) believe the legal age should be raised to 21 just like it is currently in the US.
A lot of my friends wasted their student loans on going out and partying and a few even had to drop out of college all together. I believe the legal age to drink should be set at 21 as the majority of 18 year olds do not know the full extent of the damage that can be caused by binge drinking.
I am the mother of two teenagers and obviously was a teenager....not so long ago. I believe then and now, a teenager's mind-set about drinking comes from the parents. When I was a teenager, in the late 80's, I abused alcohol regularly, all through high school...my father is an alcoholic. I wasn't taught the right and wrong's of drinking; I only had my dad's example to go by. I believed if you had one drink you continued until you passed out. All was done very discreetly as I was under age. Since it was discreet, that meant that we drove around and drank...that's right, we drove.
Now, as a mother of teenagers, my children know that there is a responsible way to drink. That you can have one or two drinks and stop...and still have a good time. That you don't need to drink to have a good time.
No matter what the drinking age, you will continue to have drunk drivers...everyday in the newspaper, you can read about someone, decades over the drinking age, that has had a drunk driving accident.
I believe the duty is with the parents to teach responsibility and with society to not tolerate drunk driving, of any age. We need to make the punishment for drunk driving much harsher.
I believe the drinking age should be lowered to 18. I believe it would lessen the binge drinking because they will no longer have to "hide" the party. I believe if the drinking age was 18, people would be more likely to ask for a ride home, instead of "hiding" that they have been drinking. They would be more likely to call their parents or a friend for a ride, instead of "hiding".
We don't need laws to teach the rights and wrongs of drinking and driving...we need parenting.
