Should the drinking age be lowered to 18 again?

Punishing everyone because of a few idiots is not the way to go.

For example, here in NSW the government keeps restricting young drivers. They restrict the cars they can drive, the time they can drive, how many passengers they can have and how fast they car drive.(First year drivers are limited to 90 even though in some parts of the country the speed limit is 130)

Every time some idiot teen driver drives at 200kmh in the rain, with 8 people in the car, after downing a bottle of vodka and ends up wrapping the car around a tree, spreading their mates body parts over the block, the government thinks it will solve future crashes by adding another restriction to young drivers licences.

Then decent law abiding drivers have to put up with these stupid restrictions, while the *bleep*wits with half a brain cell still do the same stupid stuff and kill themselves. Because they have no respect for any of the laws.

Its the same with drinking, just because some 18 year olds are immature and do stupid stuff while drinking, it doesn't mean the decent 18 year olds should be punished. Maybe the government should look at ways to educate people on the topic of drinking, instead of saying, "some of you are stupid, therefore none of you are allowed to drink"

quote MyShilohMy

Marijuana is illegal, yet people still do it. There will always be people doing it illegally. To be honest I don't trust really any high schooler's judgement. I think 99.99% of them are ignorant, selfish morons who will go driving while they are drunk. 21 year old's are a little better but eh.

So if 18yo could drink 99.99% of them would participate in drink driving?
Exaggerated much?
I live in a 'backwards' country that allows us to drink at 18. When I was drinking at 18 I only heard of a few people I know drink driving. It's not a common problem, it seams as common as all age groups.


I just pulled some figures, In Australia, we are allowed to drink at 18.
In 2010 30% of our road fatalities were caused by drink driving.
In USA drinking age 21, in 2009 38% of the fatalities were caused by drink driving.
I know they are not the same year, but that's the first I found, 1 year doesn't make much different.

By the way over here Provisional drivers (been driving for 3 years or less(all 17-20yo)) have to have 0.00%BAC if they want to legally drive. A sip of beer and they are over the driving limit.
Full licenced drivers are allowed 0.05%BAC.
I believe in the USA you are allowed 0.08%BAC

Because Americans get a larger limit there is more people who would think "Ill be fine, I'm pretty sure I am under the limit"
So maybe it's not an age thing, but a mentality thing.


American http://www.alcoholalert.com/drunk-driving-statistics.html

Australian http://www.anzpaa.org.au/current-initiatives/operation-crossroads/road-policing-statistics

quote DaKiNg5343

when a kid turns 16, have them pick between a driver's license or a drinker's license. can't have both until age 21. kids have problem making good decisions, so let's make it easy for them. and have stiff fines and penalities in place if caught drinking or driving without a license.

Terrible idea. I think many people will pick drinking licence then regret it when they realize alcohol isn't that great and can't hold down a job or get anywhere due to be unable to drive.

What would work better is education, more policing of drink driving and much bigger fines and punishments for breaking these rules.
A small percentage of people are stupid and break rules, why punish all the decent people? You see this happening more and more these days because the governments are lazy and banning stuff is just the easiest thing for them to do, even though it is just a band aid solution.

People aged 21+ will still break the rules, but the government is not doing anything to reduce that because they think they have already saved the world by the outright ban to young people.