My Thoughts: Alcohol

First things first, I will not be talking about alcohol and myself, or anything related to that. Perhaps I'll cover that someday down the road.

Moving on, what I want to talk about is the Drinking Age. You hear it everywhere. "21 means 21." Well over in most parts of Europe "21 means you've been drinking for a while now." I personally believe that the drinking age should be lowered to 18. Or if I'm really hoping on hopes, lower.

Reason 1: You can vote, why can't you drink? Would somebody be able to guide me through the logic that an 18 Year Old has enough sense, reason, and maturity to be able to vote for the President of the United States along with other elected officials, as well as serve in the Armed Services, but isn't smart or reasonable enough to handle and willingly imbibe alcohol? I would have to say that's kind of messed up, wouldn't you?

Reason 2: College. Most people either went to college, visited a friend at college, heard about college from a friend, or just sat down and watched Animal House. The point being that everyone, and I mean everyone, knows what goes down at colleges in terms of parties and the like. Kids go off to college, and they become immersed in this subculture of a drinking hierarchy. Everyone goes to school during the week, then Friday night comes along, and everyone goes out to party. (Okay, not everybody, but enough that I make a valid point.) I know at UMass there's some crap statistic floating around on different posters around Campus saying "3 out of 4 UMass Students know how to have fun without Alcohol. Do you?" First of all; Yeah I do. Second, I also know that all four of those students probably know how to have fun with Alcohol too. Plus, that they get this statistics from mandatory classes that have to be taken after students get busted for Alcohol tends to make these statistics invalid or at the very least heavily skewed.

Back to my point though, Parents send their kids off to College knowing that they're going to be all around drinking, and that they're not going to be there to watch over their shoulder. So it's best to let them just drop into this new setting, not knowing how to drink, and let those Frat Boys show them how to do a keg stand, right? Were the drinking age to be dropped to 18, most students tend to turn 18 their senior year of High School, when they still live under their parents Sauron-like gaze, which would allow parents to set a good example. That couple of months should be long enough for parents to give their kids some idea of how to drink responsibly. And if you don't think so, what's wrong with you that you can't sit down for maybe 1 night and tell your kid that drinking too much alcohol is bad for them? All I'm saying is that kids are going to school and most likely will be drinking before the age of 21. If you'd like them to learn how to drink from Frat Boys and other excess drinkers and party goers, keep 21 21. But I think it'd be a lot more reasonable to have kids learn how to drink under their parents than under Brother Buster at Beta Tau Omega.

Reason 3: Not every kid is as dumb as you give them credit for. Lots of people tend to have a big argument about lowering the age as 18 year olds simply aren't smart enough to handle this huge responsibility. Well maybe if you treated it more like a responsibility and less like a privilege, less people would take it for granted. I'll put it like this. Hypothetically, if the age were lowered, maybe even lower than 18, and younger kids were taught that alcohol wasn't to be abused, but used in moderation, and were allowed to experience this in little steps as they got older, they wouldn't just have this idea of alcohol as the forbidden fruit that the American School and Police system make it out to be. I remember back in the day sitting in my 5th grade classroom with the D.A.R.E. officer coming in to tell us all about how drugs and alcohol are bad. He was basically like, "Well Alcohol is horrible and you should never use it ever, but when adults drink it, because we're old and mature and can handle it, it allows us to relax, and have a better time hanging out with friends." Or at least that's what I remember. Given that description, kids would be dumb to not try it to prove how mature they were. If you were to ease kids into it instead of making it out as this Golden Apple, I am positive that it would definitely lose most of the allure that young kids see in it nowadays. It's only a big deal because some jackhole decided to make it a big deal. If you treat your kid like he or she is adult enough to handle it, they'll do everything they can to prove to you that they are in my opinion.

I could go on, but I know that some people have their minds all made up, and will disagree with what I said, as I am set in my way about this. So if anyone cares to write back and explain how flawed I am in my thinking, I would thoroughly enjoy getting into a heated debate about it, but otherwise I've said my thoughts. Jim out.