The Denver Post recently reported that a Republican lawmaker plans to introduce a bill in the Colorado legislature that would allow restaurants and bars to provide alcohol to young adults, older than 18 but younger than 21, if their parents are on hand to make the purchase. It reports that Wisconsin has a similar law.
The Post reports the congressman was introducing the bill after not being able to share a drink with his daughter on her 20th birthday. Another argument was that parents of members of the military would also then be able to buy their children a drink to celebrate their return from a tour of duty.
What do you think — good idea? Or why not leave it the way it is — another three years is not long to wait?
Age is simply a number. Maturity of the individual is everything. Maybe they need a test to take (like getting a driver's license)...
I could sit here all day rattling off such quandaries of the modern family and what is the expectation of the teenage waiter (or 22 year old manager) at Chili's supposed to be when they start hearing story after story about why an older person feels that they have the right to buy alcohol for an underage person. And there is an infinite amount of such scenarios that you could come up with that anybody could just say that one was their case and is some employee supposed to stand there and try to guess if the person is lying or not? What we should do is simply drop the drinking age to 18 and forget about this other nonsense. It is insane that we think that somebody is old enough to vote and determine political outcomes in this nation or that we are ready to arm them and send them to foreign countries at the age of 18, yet we don't think that they are responsible enough to drink. It used to tick me off when I was 18 to 20, but even well beyond that now, it is embarrassing as a nation that we still have a drinking age of 21.
Also, while I am all for extending extra social benefits like this for our military, I was talking more about anybody who is of the same age that we feel is responsible enough to enlist in our military should be seen as responsible enough to drink. As Justin very accurately pointed out above, the number itself is almost irrelevant in how responsible anybody is going to be with alcohol at any age.
We don't just give a sixteen-year-old the keys and say "now you magically know how to drive" nor to we toss a six-year-old a baseball and expect them to know how to play. We participate in these activities with them and show them how it's done. Why shouldn't the same model be used with alcohol? At twenty-one, anyone in the USA can buy as much alcohol as they wish and use it how they wish. If they have nothing to model against, they can endanger themselves and others. Give parents the rights that many other countries already enjoy. Share a glass of wine with their children. Teach them to respect the grape, then perhaps we would not have to deal with so many unfortunate consequences.
I don't drink, but I don't think it's my place to restrict parents in that way. Moderation is the key. Too much sugar is bad for children too, yet we're ok with allowing parents to make the decisions regarding that. The trick is we have to expect people to be responsible. And that may be the problem in this country....
Raise the drinking age 26 if healthcare coverage is provided by the parent! 21 otherwise.