No better way than to start by congratulating the Los Angeles Lakers and any Lakers fans here at UB.
I was sitting down this weekend and reflecting on certain things... and a random question came to mind, and I would like your opinions and thoughts on this.
As we all know the legal drinking age is 21. Do you think it should be lowered to 20 or even possibly 18? I ask this because there is a large number of 'under-aged drinkers' and I wonder how effective this law is. Please share your thoughts.
Monday, June 15, 2009
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5 comments:
YAAAAAY Lakers!!!! I'm so excited to find ONE Lakers fan at UB! I've been a fan for life and I'm very excited for my team and my fav player to win the title!
Sarah
Did you hear about the rioting in L.A.? Is that normal? Yikes.
I did hear about the rioting. And yes, it's normal. Remember the LA Riots back in '92?
I doubt the 21 standard will change anytime soon--there are simply too many stakeholders. That is, even if you could argue fairness (voting age, taxes, and whatnot) you would still have to contend with transportation officials, moms, and scientists. Who can really argue that alcohol is not a "bad" thing and that age doesn't bring better judgment? To be honest, I think there are good points on both sides of the aisle. You also have to consider the states vs. federal domain on this issue. In all truth, I think you'd see more movement on the legalizing marijuana issue before anyone lowered the drinking age, haha.
Chris, it's good that you brought this up -- I think touchy subjects need the greatest amount of discussion in order to bring out all the facts and options.
There was some publicity a while back about some kind of thing going around that college presidents all over the country were signing on to in support of lowering the drinking age to 18. When it came up for discussion in one of my government classes and the opinions between students were divided between basically 3 camps -- 1. those of us who thought it was an "easy fix" for college presidents who are tired of battling the under-age drinking problem on campuses (the position I agree with) 2. the younger students who want the age lowered and 3. some older students who felt that lowering the age would lead to students learning to drink more responsibly at an earlier age. (That one strains my logic a bit.)
Anyway, I don't know what ever happened to the college presidents' "petition" thing -- maybe it just died out -- but I do think we need to keep talking about the issue until a good decision is made based on sound reasoning.
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