It’s incredibly hypocritical to say that a 50 year old alcoholic can buy alcohol because he is old enough (read: mature enough), but a 20-year old graduate student cannot because he is too immature.

Don’t forget that Rosa Parks was jailed too. Just because it’s a law doesn’t make it right.

If I were the parent of one of these students, I would immediately enroll my child in a private school. Then, I would sue the city and the school district for causing emotional distress by knowingly making false statements.

What were they thinking when they did this? What if one of the students was so distressed over it that they committed suicide? I’m sure they didn’t consult any psychological experts beforehand on the effects of their little ‘experiment’.

This could never be done to a group of adults without causing national public outrage.

We should penalize adult individuals based upon their actions with alcohol, not on their age. There is no reason why a competent and mature 19 year old should be denied alcohol for the sole reason being because he is 19. Meanwhile we can serve pregnant women, convicted drunk drivers, and alcoholics so long as they are over 21. It doesn’t make sense and it’s taking the completely wrong approach.

Sheila
ph. no. 250-995-1643

ATTTB regs require that these drinks be malt-based to qualify for malt beverage taxation rates; California has chosen to ignore that guidance and tax them as liquor anyway. (Let’s leave out the nonsense behind different taxation rates for spirits, wine, and beer: it’s all alcohol, after all.)

When it comes to sweet drinks, what’s the difference between one of these drinks and a rum and coke? Boone’s Farm? An Irish coffee? All sweet, but no one’s singling them out. Why not?

Please reconsider your position. Arbitrary restrictions like these are the very worst kind of alcohol law…much like pegging the LDA at 21 instead of 18.

One thing that’s not debatable is this country’s mistreatment and infantalization of its young adults. At least he had the guts to mention MADD’s stronghold (or former stronghold) on the drinking debate.

Good to see the type of coverage this issue is getting. If America as a whole spent as much time thinking about, and acting on, this issue as we college an university educators do, I think the drop to 18 would be a forgone conclusion.

On top of that, if they could see what we see, the bill would be drafted tomorrow.

Keep up the good work.

Thankyou.

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Alcohol abuse affects millions. This site has a lot of useful information.

Alcohol Abuse

First, Mr. Kent states that “between 1983 and 1989, where there was an immense drop in fatalities, the only two age groups that dropped were 16-20 year olds and 21-25 year olds.” That assertion is false. According to Hingson and Winter (2003), between 1983 and 1989 alcohol-related traffic fatalities dropped in every age group except age 30-45. Indeed, alcohol-related fatalities in the 16-20 age group went UP significantly between 1985 and 1986.

Second, Mr. Kent agrees that half the studies undertaken show a positive relationship between the higher drinking age and the decline in alcohol-related traffic fatalities and half do not. He is also correct that the other half show no relationship whatsoever. And that is precisely the point: that half of the peer-reviewed studies show no relationship between the two variables. This is not a case of “four decades of scholarship weighing against no scholarship;” it is a case of four decades of scholarship reaching an inconclusive position on the cause-and-effect relationship between law and fatalities. To suggest otherwise is to … well, … mislead?

Finally, Mr. Kent misunderstands the point about alcohol-related fatalities off the highways in the 18-24 age group. We agree with him that “to look at a ‘scary’ number like a thousand lives and to provide no context for it is either intellectually laziness or dishonesty.” To our knowledge, before the Hingson et al studies which were published in 2001 and 2005 but based on data collected between 1998 and 2001, there had been no study, never mind recording, of non-highway, alcohol-related accidental deaths (perhaps Mr. Kent could direct us to his source for 1800 such deaths in 1980). According to the two studies by Hingson and colleagues, the number of such fatalities has been going up at an alarming rate and now stands well above 1,000 per year. The most generous estimates of lives saved annually, in all age groups, by Legal Age 21, is 1,000, and alcohol-related traffic fatalities reached a 10-year high in 2006. Highs aren’t reached when the trend is downward.