US Drinking Age:

Caught drunk driving, you lose your license forever. Legalise all drugs.

Especially angel dust and Special K!

Oh, and all those date rape drugs! Those are way cool, too!

Phil =====visit the New York City Homebrewers Guild website:

Maybe I'm being nitpicky, but Reagan wasn't president in 1980, so that seems a bit early for the "Just Say No" campaign. I remember it more as a mid-80s thing (I was also 10 in 1980, so we're the same age). Regardless, even at the time - and I was one of those damn goody-goody kids at the time who had no interest in drugs anyway - I thought the whole thing was laughably silly and wholly useless.

When does American culture communicate a message of responsibility about anything? Eat till you make yourself enormous! Buy a bigger and bigger SUV! Bring a driver so you can get plastered! Get rich quick! Plus there's the schizophrenic attitude to sex, where the Puritan sensibility fights with the fact that sexuality is plastered everywhere.

Responsibility is not part of American culture. Overindulgence, consumption, getting yours - those are what the culture is about.

Teaching responsible drinking is a nice idea. In a culture that doesn't teach responsible anything, it ain't gonna happen anytime soon.

I don't think it's gotten any clearer at all. It's gotten even muddier, if you ask me. Buy pot, and you support terrorism. Yeah, that's a clear anti-drug message. Parents, know where your kids are, and be involved in their lives. Wow, there's some strong medicine to keep your kid from getting hopped up on crank. Hell, the Office of National Drug Control Policy won't even use its name anymore on its little sponsorhip messages on my local NPR station: they just call themselves ONDCP. That's the opposite of clear.

Besides, I don't think it's the culture's job to teach kids. It's parents' jobs to teach kids. I'm not saying that society either isn't involved or doesn't have a vested interest in teaching kids to be responsible and helping them achieve the skills they need to be productive adults, but no one has more influence, and no one should have more influence, than parents. Parents teach kids how to be responsible with alcohol, food, sex, money, cars, whatever. At least they should be.

I don't agree with the 21 drinking age; I think if you're an adult at 18 and have all the legal responsibilities and obligations of adulthood, then you should get all the privileges of adulthood as well. But I don't think changing the drinking age is going to do one thing in favor of teaching responsibility. We're not a responsibility culture, and a change in drinking age isn't going to change that.

-Steve

I'm with you so far.

That second clause I agree with. Unfortunately, as a parent and one who has read a fair bit on the topic, I don't think the first part of that is true. Between peers and society (which includes everything from advertising to what they see in school and the neighborhoods) parents have less influence on teen and older pre-teen kids than your average childless 35-y.o. male might think.

You can lead a horse to water, but kids will be kids and let experience be the best teacher. Not to mix metaphors or anything.

Ayup.

Speaking as the guy the OP quoted...that's pretty much how I feel, too.

I am not average.

Yeah, I see your point. I was thinking more of younger children when I wrote. But a lot of how a kid responds to peers and social pressures comes from lessons learned earlier in life, and examples set. At least that's what the books say.

True. On the other hand, while it's hardly a fool-proof predictor, in my observation the kids of responsible adults in general tend to act responsibly, while the kids of irresponsible adults in general tend to act irresponsibly. There are plenty of counter-examples (I need only think of my own family for that) to show it's not a hard-and-fast rule, but it seems the tendency is there.

Which, to wind back around, I think people are more likely to learn responsible drinking from good examples set by their own families and, yeah, friends. That said, the societal message of "drinks bad!" instantly makes it more appealing to a lot of kids, just by virtue of it being presented as bad. You could say "Barry Manilow evil!" and suddenly hoards of kids would be illegally downloading Manilow records.

OK, maybe not.

-Steve

I offer my thoughts on responsible drinking on my web page at

Not many Louisianans joined the Union Army in 1861 because, in their view, the Union was the enemy.

Why expect men and women under 21 to join the National Guard when Congress and the state legislature are so hostile toward them?

If hate-mongering MADD bigots suffered and perished for want of soldiers during the Crescent City Holocaust, it was a consequence of their own malicious wrongdoing. Too bad they took so many decent people with them.

Then again if they (Men and women under 21) are IGNORANT enough to join the National Gaurd or other military service voluntarily instead of going for higher education then they aren't smart enough to drink in moderation!

It's why the military only wants young people! Kids are STUPID and will do anything you order them to! I know from experience! Try giving a lot of the same orders to a 30 year old and you'll be told to F*CK OFF! It's simply a matter of maturity!

I think the drinking age should be raised to age 28!

CSM. Jack Robbins US Army Retired after 36 years

That alone is one of the more ignorant statements I've read in a while.

Yeah, that must be why there are all those 22-year-old sergeants and captains in the military.

I'm not pro-military by any means - I've been accused of quite the opposite - but I'm also intelligent enough to realize that for some people it's a career choice that makes sense, and that it's not simple ignorance that draws one to the military. (Usually it's poverty and a lack of other options, but that's something for a different newsgroup altogether.)

And the choice of military service or higher education and being able to drink responsibly have f*ck-all to do with each other, as university frat parties amply prove weekend after weekend.

So what's that say about your maturity if you stuck with an immature job for

-Steve

Oh, boy....

I keep hearing how "...there's enough blame to go around..." but I never expected it to get all the way to the neo-Prohibitionists down at MADD ...

Wow. I just read that page, and here is the most disturbing thing I read:

So... Everyone must always drink to get drunk? There are no other pleasures derived from a bottle of Okocim Porter?

_Randal

Sure. Collecting.

Wow, the one that disturbed me was this one:

-- NEVER drink before or during work hours at a job you need, to support yourself or your family. Not even a little bit.

Shit. I'm screwed.

Shows how ridiculous blanket statements can be.

You mean Barry Manilow's Recordings still exist! I thought the UN Human rights commission had confiscated all of them years ago as a weapon of mass Distruction.

But the little bit I drink won't affect me.

It says a LOT about my maturity considering I can lure your stupid ass into a furored reply HA HA HA!

Obviously you dont have a clue about kids or the military eh? Typical Bu(LL)s**te supporter!

Sorry to tell you this Stevie but kids are cannon fodder.....nothing but!

Maturity eh?....Hmmm....My job was to place as many kids needed in harms way and hope they all didnt get killed.

Think you could do better asswipe? You got the balls?

I doubt it

Wow, that's the first time I've been accused of being a military supporter in, well, ever.

So, in other words, you're a murderer. Or what else do you call someone who knows he's setting up kids to get killed, but just keeps doing his job?

Didn't claim I could.

And "kids" can come up with much better retorts than "asswipe." What are you, 9?

I'm still trying to wrap my head around someone who spent 30-some years in a job and institution he clearly despises. That doesn't take balls. That takes being a coward.

-Steve