I think it's utterly ridiculous that you can vote, buy cigarettes, be tried as an adult in a court of law and die for your country at 18 - but you can't buy beer for three more years. I'm 100% in favor of reducing the drinking age back to 18. (In fact, I'm 100% in favor of eliminating a federally mandated drinking age altogether. What right does the government have to tell me what I can and cannot put into my body, as long as I'm not hurting anyone else?)

As for drunk driving, well, there are already laws against driving while intoxicated. In my mind, a federal drinking age only undermines the power of those laws; after all, if the DUI laws work, then why do we need even more laws restricting access to alcohol? Either the DUI laws don't work and need to be retooled; or they do work and further legislation is unnecessary.

This is a subject near and dear to my heart. As I've said countless times before, I was an RA in college and alcohol was always a huge issue. On the one hand, I needed my residents to know they could trust me if they got in over their head and needed help (I did have to call some ambulances). On the other, my employer expected me to report ANY drinking at all (it was a dry dorm) and residents caught drinking would lose housing. About 8 students died from alcohol poisoning or alcohol-related incidents during my first year as an RA (thankfully, none on my watch though most were off campus so I don't blame their RAs at all). I hate binge drinking, I hate what it does to people, and I hate that it's such an important part of college culture.

That said, this proposal is one of the stupidest f***ing things I've ever heard in my life. In my experience, the reason students binge drink isn't because it's illegal (though many do drink ridiculous amounts on their 21st birthday to celebrate the law's acknowledgment of their maturity). They drink because they just got away from Mom and Dad and most of them are moving from a tightly controlled environment with relatively severe and direct consequences (groundings) to a much less controlled one with rather abstract ones (getting "written up," hearings, etc.). Age 18 is precisely when this change happens!

I think the idea is sound and that Europe has shown us that binge drinking is related to drinking being a taboo; people who grow up with a glass of wine at dinner often don't understand why Americans delight in drinking until they vomit and pass out. What we need to do is drop the legal drinking age to 16 or below, or abolish it entirely. Give kids a few years to learn how to drink in the safe, closely supervised environment of their own home. Let them go to college knowing their limits.

The only thing this proposal will do is decrease the workload for RAs and campus police who no longer have to deal with underaged drinking. It won't help the binge drinking problem in the slightest.

MADD is against drunk drivers, not drunk teens. They see making it legal for more people to drink will lead to more drunk drivers, which isn't a bad assumption. I think the best argument against MADD is that there are already people under 21 that drink and drive, so lowering the age to 18 won't affect much.

What federal drinking age?

I think that the drinking age should be lowered to 18, and the driving age be raised to 21. Let the kids get past the binge drinking phase and then teach them to drive.

Of course, I'd have absolutely hated that idea when I was 18, and my logic may be totally off base, but that's the way I see it.

I've always been in favor of an age-18 drinking law. I was favor of that at about 16, and it never changed.

Why? Because if you can be forced to die for your country, you're an adult. There is no better definition. If you can be drafted (or volunteer, for that matter), you sure as hell should be able to drink. If you're responsible enough to be given control of some of the deadliest weapons in the world, you can, I think, be trusted with a jar of suds.

As far as the culture of binge drinking goes; I dunno what that is. I did plenty of drinking, both before and after 21. I thoroughly enjoyed getting plastered, but I never drank to the point of passing out or puking. I never really understood the thinking of those that did. It was obviously important to some to drink until you hurled, but I didn't get why. Still don't.

Wonder if it might be a genetic thing?

That's incorrect. The poorly named National Minimum Drinking Age Act of 1984 actually concerns the age for "purchase and public possession". It's legal for those under 21 to consume alcohol in several states.

Exceptions to Minimum Age of 21 for Consumption of Alcohol as of January 1, 2007

http://alcoholpolicy.niaaa.nih.gov/index.asp?Type=BAS_APIS&SEC={0D5C719E-FCE8-4E15-A367-4145C655505F}&DE={E6F19624-0ADC-437F-917D-5E7CBC9F58B9}

Seth, it'd be nice if the campus would provide that kind of supervision but there's no way it'll happen. The last weekend of every school year would be a MASSIVE party, entire parking lots full of people ALL binging (my final year, the ambulances started showing up 15 minutes after the party started and 2 cars were flipped over), and the university would hand out plastic cups in an effort to take broken glass out of the equation.

Can you imagine the outrage if a university actually sponsored a drinking party? They'd be encouraging drinking. Would they be supplying the alcohol? Were I a student going into severe debt in order to pay tuition, I would not be happy about that. Were I a parent, I would be appalled.

Maverick, I was an RA at the main UCONN campus in Storrs. It was very rough at times, especially my first year as an RA. In fact, on 9/11 I had been an RA all of 1 month and I was on duty that day. That was a nightmare.

I find this point interesting because I'm currently in training as an RA and this will be my third year as an RA. There may be less paperwork in the short run but I'm somewhat concerned about people taking advantage of the lowered age and then abusing it. This isn't necessarily a sound reason for not allowing it, but just a concern of mine.

Also, I think with college life the amount of free time and variable level of responsibilities of a college student, the culture is much more conducive to binge drink as opposed to trying to hold down a steady job with a family etc.

On a more selfish note, I don't think I want freshmen at my campus bars because they are so inexperienced in most cases. That and they are rather crowded as it is. But what can you do?

Good luck. I don't envy you.

Whenever I took the campus bus I would inevitably hear other students talking about how drunk they got, or how they were looking forward to getting drunk, or how they just got paid so they could buy a couple 30 packs. I usually walked to and from class.

Once I was in a cafeteria and I heard one student point me out to his friend because I "narc'd" on him. He was one of those "ambulance calls" I mentioned earlier. So I walked over to him and I said, "Look, I have nothing against you, I just didn't want you to die." He seemed a little surprised... but probably more that he was heard than in any sort of realization of his own mortality.

I think a lot of problems with binge drinking stem from the fact that most kids have not been introduced to drinking in a controlled manner. If the law and parents keep a wall between kids and alcohol until the age of 21, the kids aren't going to have any experience to fall back on. Their first experiences with alcohol will be with others of the same age with similarly non-existent levels of experience. You essentially have the blind leading the blind, and that's always a recipe for disaster.

In Iowa, it is legal for persons under the age of 21 to drink with parents present and consenting, and my 18 year old son has been partaking of some drink with me since he turned 18. This has the advantage of him learning his limits in a controlled environment, as well as appreciation for good alcohol. Of course, when he's off to college he'll probably just do what everyone else is doing anyways, but just maybe there will be that little bit of wisdom in the back of his brain that stops him before he goes over the edge.

It's really too bad that alcohol is as vilified as it is. My job is hard enough already, but with maybe 1% of parents teaching the same lesson, there's a lot of other kids that will be working against my teachings. I truly believe that if my approach was more ubiquitous, there would be a lot less binge drinking and a lot more enjoyment of alcohol to boot.

Not anymore. It's one of the reasons the original founder left the organization. It's become a modern-day prohibition movement.

MADD accomplished their original goals. They got laws with stiff penalties against drunk driving passed everywhere.

Well that was done, so they needed goals. Then they got everyone to lower the threshold for being drunk from .10 to .08. They got the drinking age raised to 21.

OK, now they have a $45 million annual budget. What can they do next? Now they want the threshold lowered to 0, so it would be illegal to drink one beer and go home. Now they want every new car to have an interlock installed as standard equipment so the car won't start if any alcohol is detected. Their stated goals have progressed into the absurd solely so they can justify their continued existence.

If only someone could introduce them to some hobbies beyond meddling in other people's lives. But what hobbies would be best...MMO's can get these moms off our backs! Let's start a drive to collect WoW disks to get these people hooked and off our backs!

I agree that it's ridiculous, but I'd think some people might say that serving your country is positive and helpful to community and country whereas getting drunk is not. Or to be cynical, it's in the interests of the people making the laws that 18-year-olds can serve but not drink.

I think it's important to note that it's illegal (at least in my state) to be publically *drunk* no matter what age you are.

I think we really need to differentiate between enjoying a beer with your meal, or having a glass of scotch with your buddies, and playing Edward 40-Hands.