Poll: age limit for drinking alcohol

[JJM 777]

Threads exist about this, but no recent poll:

What should be the age limit for drinking alcohol?

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

Whistle training for US busy bodies.
Consider "kinderbeer", training alcohol for children in Germany.
How 'bout: "at what age would you introduce your own kids to wine at dinner?"
I'll answer that one. I don't have kids but I would approve if a friend gave his 6 year old dilute wine at dinner.

 

[RhodyDave]

There shouldn't be an age that one needs to be to 'drink' alcohol. As a child, and now as a parent, I've had and have allowed my children to have very small amounts of wine, for example, at special meals and such.

There should be a limit as to how old you need to be to purchase alcohol, and I think this should be 18. As parents, we should have the say in when our children can partake.

 

[Lamuella]

18 unsupervised. Parent or guardian's discretion before that.

 

[Sabretooth]

18.

For the record, I'm 38.

I think it's absolutely ridiculous that you can drive, vote, smoke, or die for your country by 18, but you can't legally enjoy a cold one. Stupid.

 

[Dragoonster]

All those age choices and no "no age requirement" option? If you wanted to stick with the numbered theme you could've at least added 0...

Anyway that's my view; that all age-based laws are arbitrary, unfair, and should be done away with. Too bad I can't vote in this poll!

 

[catsmate]

18 unsupervised. Parent or guardian's discretion before that.

This. Which is pretty much what the situation is in most of the world. And was in most of the USA until the eighties.

 

[MarkCorrigan]

There shouldn't be an age that one needs to be to 'drink' alcohol. As a child, and now as a parent, I've had and have allowed my children to have very small amounts of wine, for example, at special meals and such.

There should be a limit as to how old you need to be to purchase alcohol, and I think this should be 18. As parents, we should have the say in when our children can partake.

I agree with this pretty much 100%.

I used to have small amounts of wine as a child and it really did demystify alcohol for me, plus it helped improve my palate.

 

[Agatha]

As is the case here: 18 unsupervised or in a public place, parental discretion prior to that.

I permitted all my four children to try diluted wine, very weak beer or cider with special dinners from the age of eight or so. All of them have a sensible attitude to alcohol now, one doesn't drink at all and the others drink responsibly (more responsibly than I do).

 

[JJM 777]

parental discretion

"Parental discretion" is a slippery slope. There are many parents without any discretion whatsoever. Thousands of parents in the world give vodka to a 0 yrs old baby, to get them stop crying. Millions of mothers get their unborn fetus intoxicated by drinking while pregnant. Thousands of parents have sex with their children. Millions of parents circumcize their daughters. All this is "parental discretion".

 

[Tsukasa Buddha]

[anecdote]
For me, not having any real experience with alcohol or being around drunk relatives lead to my teetotalism. If people are like "Woo, let's get wasted," my natural response is "Um... why?"

I've heard people say that familiarising kids and removing the forbidden fruit aspect helps, but I need to look up some hard data.
[/anecdote]

In conclusion, alcohol consumption is a vice that should only be allowed to the extent that further restrictions lead to a net increase in disorder. I don't think we've reached that level yet, so bring on Prohibition 2012!

Though reasonably, kids are still developing and are unable to make very good choices even sober, so I'd say restrictions there are justified.

Some preliminary research:

Significantly more alcohol-involved crashes occurred among 15-to 19-year-olds than would have occurred had the purchase age not been reduced to 18 years. The effect size for 18- to 19-year-olds is remarkable given the legal exceptions to the pre-1999 law and its poor enforcement.

Linky.

Alcohol use health consequences are considerable; prevention efforts are needed, particularly for adolescents and college students. The national minimum legal drinking age of 21 years is a primary alcohol-control policy in the United States. An advocacy group supported by some college presidents seeks public debate on the minimum legal drinking age and proposes reducing it to 18 years.

We reviewed recent trends in drinking and related consequences, evidence on effectiveness of the minimum legal drinking age of 21 years, research on drinking among college students related to the minimum legal drinking age, and the case to lower the minimum legal drinking age.

Evidence supporting the minimum legal drinking age of 21 years is strong and growing. A wide range of empirically supported interventions is available to reduce underage drinking. Public health professionals can play a role in advocating these interventions.

Linky.

In this paper, we summarize a large and compelling body of empirical evidence which shows that one of the central claims of the signatories of the Amethyst Initiative is incorrect: setting the minimum legal drinking age at 21 clearly reduces alcohol consumption and its major harms. However, this finding alone is not a sufficient justification for the current minimum legal drinking age, in part because it does not take into account the benefits of alcohol consumption. To put it another way, it is likely that restricting the alcohol consumption of people in their late 20s (or even older) would also reduce alcohol-related harms at least modestly. However, given the much lower rate at which adults in this age group experience alcohol-related harms, their utility from drinking likely outweighs the associated costs. Thus, when considering at what age to set the minimum legal drinking age, we need to determine if the reduction in alcohol-related harms justifies the reduction in consumer surplus that results from preventing people from consuming alcohol.

...

Although the research summarized here convinces us that an earlier drinking age alone would increase alcohol-related harms, we do not think there is enough evidence to evaluate the effectiveness of alcohol education and alcohol licensing, either in isolation or in combination with a lower minimum drinking age. While we are certainly not opposed to experimentation with alternative policies for encouraging responsible alcohol consumption, the evidence strongly suggests that setting the minimum legal drinking age at 21 is better from a cost and benefit perspective than setting it at 18 and that any proposal to reduce the drinking age should face a very high burden of proof.

Linky.

The cause and effect relationship between MLDAs of 21 and reductions in highway crashes is clear. Initiatives to lower the drinking age to 18 ignore the demonstrated public health benefits of MLDAs of 21.

Linky.

Based on this analysis, the comparison of drinking rates and alcohol-related problems among young people in the United States and in European countries does not provide support for lowering the U.S. minimum drinking age or for the implementation of programs to teach responsible drinking to young people.

Linky.

Oddly, I have failed to come across any pro-lower-than-21 data. Usually I get a good mix of studies that do different takes on the issue and get different conclusions.

 

[Jorghnassen]

18 is a fine drinking age since it's consistent with all the other stuff you're allowed to do at 18. Culture has a lot to do with it as well. I have my own cultural bias, but I'm not impressed by Tsukasa Buddha's links. Especially the last one.

 

[Dragoonster]

[anecdote]
For me, not having any real experience with alcohol or being around drunk relatives lead to my teetotalism. If people are like "Woo, let's get wasted," my natural response is "Um... why?"

I've heard people say that familiarising kids and removing the forbidden fruit aspect helps, but I need to look up some hard data.
[/anecdote]

In conclusion, alcohol consumption is a vice that should only be allowed to the extent that further restrictions lead to a net increase in disorder. I don't think we've reached that level yet, so bring on Prohibition 2012!

To answer the "why", alchohol makes a person feel good. It's an extremely effective psychoactive drug. And I daresay it's probably brought many individual humans more happiness over the course of their long or short lives than if it never existed.

Some humans work 70-hour weeks, or have severe psychological afflictions, or live in a poverty situation that wouldn't change--none of this changing if they didn't drink. To such people, being drunk every night is not a vice. It's a blessing. They don't have the luxury of not-drinking-and-their-situation-magically-improves. Some will either live their entire life entirely miserable, or live it being happy or immune for at least part of the time.

Is assisted suicide okay in cases where the patient has only a few weeks or years of intense pain to look forward to, and nothing else? Alcohol is an assisted suicide to many.

 

[JJM 777]

probably brought many individual humans more happiness over the course of their long or short lives than if it never existed.

Arrive home from work, exhausted. Thirsty. Open the fridge. An ice-cold Budweiser or Sol or Tsingtao is waiting for you. That is happiness in a nutshell.

 

[Dragoonster]

Arrive home from work, exhausted. Thirsty. Open the fridge. An ice-cold Budweiser or Sol or Tsingtao is waiting for you. That is happiness in a nutshell.

Yep!

plus--after a very very long day, an imbibement is great for getting to sleep.

 

[Tsukasa Buddha]

To answer the "why", alchohol makes a person feel good. It's an extremely effective psychoactive drug. And I daresay it's probably brought many individual humans more happiness over the course of their long or short lives than if it never existed.

Some humans work 70-hour weeks, or have severe psychological afflictions, or live in a poverty situation that wouldn't change--none of this changing if they didn't drink. To such people, being drunk every night is not a vice. It's a blessing. They don't have the luxury of not-drinking-and-their-situation-magically-improves. Some will either live their entire life entirely miserable, or live it being happy or immune for at least part of the time.

Is assisted suicide okay in cases where the patient has only a few weeks or years of intense pain to look forward to, and nothing else? Alcohol is an assisted suicide to many.

Hardly a ringing endorsement .

But there is also reading books, playing video games, listening to music, and a variety of other escapist pleasures that don't cause increased car crashes, mental illness, fetal alcohol syndrome, cirrhosis, various crimes, poverty, domestic and child abuses... Obviously these risks are much greater for the more abusive drinkers, but even moderate drinking ends up a very narrow risk v reward game.

http://www.webmd.com/cancer/features/faq-alcohol-and-your-health
http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/alcohol/SC00024
https://researchspace.auckland.ac.nz/handle/2292/4700
http://www.bma.org.uk/health_promotion_ethics/alcohol/tacklingalcoholmisuse.jsp#.T8nSyI7UPOE

If you need to take a drug to get through your life, then you are probably self-medicating and depressed. Alcohol won't help with that.

 

[Architect]

This. Which is pretty much what the situation is in most of the world. And was in most of the USA until the eighties.

Indeedy

 

[Beerina]

Oddly, I have failed to come across any pro-lower-than-21 data. Usually I get a good mix of studies that do different takes on the issue and get different conclusions.

The argument for 18 is that we send 18 year olds off to fight and die in wars, but they aren't mature enough to drink?

That holds more water during major wars, though, with the draft.

 

[Jorghnassen]

Oddly, I have failed to come across any pro-lower-than-21 data. Usually I get a good mix of studies that do different takes on the issue and get different conclusions.

That's because there only are observational studies, mostly from US data where the age went up. The NZ study is the only one example of concrete lowering drinking age legislation, but their analysis is flawed (as I mentioned in the other thread). The last example you posted compares a few drinking related numbers of US vs other jurisdictions, and comes up with a nonconclusion from a really rudimentary descriptive statistics analysis.

 

[Earthborn]

Some humans work 70-hour weeks, or have severe psychological afflictions, or live in a poverty situation that wouldn't change--none of this changing if they didn't drink. To such people, being drunk every night is not a vice. It's a blessing. They don't have the luxury of not-drinking-and-their-situation-magically-improves.

People living in poverty can magically improve their situation by not drinking alcohol; alcoholic beverages tend to be expensive, so not drinking them saves them a lot of money.
People with severe psychological afflictions can often improve those afflictions by not drinking alcohol, and if that is not enough not drinking alcohol at least makes it possible for them to use psycho-pharmaceuticals to deal with their afflictions. That leaves humans who work 70 hour weeks, who can magically improve their situation by working less than 70 hours a week, and not drinking alcohol.