Alcohol And Eighteen

Old enough to fight, old enough to vote, old enough to drink.  Well, maybe in Minnesota - the Captain is kicking it around.

Personally, I don't know how you could expect somebody to vote sober.  However, as a wise man once said, we need to change people's hearts before we change the law.  The problem is not whether the drinking age is 18 or 21 per se; the problem is binge drinking in high school and college, with the attendant public safety issues including traffic fatalities and date rape.  Without a change in public attitudes about drinking, changing the law will only be tinkering around the edges.

In that regard, Ed has an interesting article from Ireland:

Over 80% of adults believe that it is easy for people under the age of 18 to access alcohol in pubs and off-licenses, new research from the HSE indicates.

The preliminary results of the research indicate that the vast majority of adults - 91% - agree that underage drinking is a problem in Ireland today, while 50% feel there is nothing they can do to stop young people from consuming alcohol.

Just 15% believe that their own drinking habits influence the habits of young people around them, while just 40% would drink less if they thought it would discourage these young people from drinking.

Well.  Their laws may be more relaxed (e.g., apparently anyone can drink in a pub if accompanied by a parent but I would hardly look to the Irish as role models for responsible alcohol consumption.

Let me add that medical scientists believe that the teenage brain is different from adults - it is still developing and hence is more subject to long term damage from alcohol exposure (1, 2, 3).  And this is an entry in the "You're not getting better, you're getting older" file:

Researchers at the Binghamton University in New York and Harvard Medical School conducted the recent study on the effects of alcohol on social interaction among groups of rats in the laboratory at many stages of adolescence and youth.

The study is published in the November issue of the journal Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research. "What I find really interesting is that they are also less sensitive than adults to hangover-related effects," said Elena Varlinskaya, a research professor of psychology at Binghamton and lead author of the study.

"The ability of adolescents to rapidly counteract some unpleasant alcohol effects by developing acute tolerance may allow them to have more drinks per occasion," she said. "This binge pattern of drinking, being unsafe in general, might be extremely dangerous for adolescents."

"Because testing the effects of alcohol on teenagers cannot be done for legal and ethical reasons, the researchers used rat models. Adolescent rats are similar to human adolescents because they spend more time in social interactions than the younger and the older animals, " Prof. Varlinskaya said.

"The results of the study could explain why adults often say they can't hold their alcohol as well as they used to, " said Anh Le, a senior scientist at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto.

As is so often the case, better role modeling by parents and adults would be helpful in reducing teenage binge drinking.  To that end, a reduction in the age to eighteen could also be helpful.  I recall accounts of colleges that once had faculty-student cocktail parties during which students could observe that it was OK to stop after two drinks, but those events are difficult to stage when most of the undergrads are also underage.

[LAST CALL]

Comments

[centralcal]

Tom: You seem to be taking your Blog for your Brain post to heart today. So many posts, so little time?

[BumperStickerist]

Minnesota?

18yo?

How about changing the law so that if you're eighteen you can only drink while ice fishing?

What could possibly go wrong?

[Danube of Thought]

All I can say is that at 68, it's quite clear that I am still too young to drink.

[kim]

Good heavens, they act as if they're surprised that the young can tolerate hangovers better than older people. By the time I was in my thirties I was bragging that I only had three hangovers a year; the memory of them lasted for four months.
=========================================

[BR]

Hee, what had me breaking out in laughter was the vision of a drunken rat party! I wonder if the scientists were shloshed too.

[BR]

Shloshed or sloshed - I don't know how to spell it, it's just a word I remember my parents using :)

[sbw]

Character is a role you play until you grow into it.

If you don't practice it, you don't grow into it.

Does this make sense: You will not be allowed to do anything until you are old enough to do it on your own. Then, no training wheels. No practice.

Doesn't make sense.

[kim]

I've heard sloshed, but I like shloshed; it's more shlurred.
================

[PeterUK]

The big problem that has developed since the invention of the "teenager",is segregated drinking.At one time,here at least,pubs and bars were for adults.Local pubs where one began practicing invariably had older people who were family or neighbours.Kids getting drunk were a rarity simply because there was supervision and adults would shop you to your parents.
Now teenagers have taken over many of what is left of local bars and pubs,the sub-teens who can't get in buy super strength lager and cider from corner shops for their antisocial joyless drinking.
Teenage drinking is now outside social confines,the objective is just to get ratarsed.

[Gmax]

If you had the prospect of Al Franken representing you, you most certainly would be in favor of more and even heavy drinking.

[boris]

One of the better times to play rock n roll in Wisconsin was when it was 18 for beer (3.2) and 21 for everything else. The best places to play in town were the 18 clubs, which were large enough for some bigger acts and plenty of opportunity for local groups too. After Wisconsin went 18 for anything those clubs died out. IMO a lot of stuff got worse.

[Elliott]

Their laws may be more relaxed

I believe the drunk driving laws are at least as strict as those in most of the U.S.

[Neo]

I know when I went to college (Lehigh U), that it came down to a choice of "poisons" ..

alcohol or drugs.

When I was there, it was alcohol, but in the years afterward they cracked down on alcohol and the consumption of drugs went up, so they relented, so now they are back to alcohol

[centralcal]

Hey BR and Kim - I like shloshed and shlurred. They are really descriptive words.

[bgates]

How about a solution after Heinlein - the 18 year old can choose between drinking and voting; with the provision that military service gets him both.

[sbw]

The problem is stupid behavior, not age.

People who act stupidly could have their opportunity to drink alcohol restricted. Similarly, people who vote stupidly — say, who voted for Obama — could have their opportunity to vote restricted.

[David]

"The ability of adolescents to rapidly counteract some unpleasant alcohol effects by developing acute tolerance may allow them to have more drinks per occasion," she said. "This binge pattern of drinking, being unsafe in general, might be extremely dangerous for adolescents."

This doesn't make sense to me: If adolescents can counteract the effects of alcohol better than elders, then isn't binge drinking safer for them? I think at least part of the reason young people binge drink more than adults is that they can get away with it, sans the crippling hangover we elders would get.

[Barry Dauphin]

TM's new method for dealing with end of thread issue: put up so many posts at once, we never make it off page 1.

[Stephanie]

The problem the deans are trying to address is the underground drinking. When the law was 18, you could drink in the dorms and the college bars and frat houses and didn't wander too far off the beaten path. There were enough moderate 18 yr old drinkers to ride shotgun on the ones that got out of control.

With the advent of the 21 law, the older more responsible students are in the bars and the 18-20 year olds are in the shadows with no one to ride herd on their antics and no dance floor to sweat out the drinks. The deans have realized that having the drinking take place in establishments with adults at the controls like bar owners, the incidence of alcohol stupidity is reduced.

The number one past time of most college students is partying, meeting the opposite sex, and drinking is the grease that makes that work. No girl wants a drunk, and in a dance club, the drunk is controlled, cut off and ostracized (according to the norms of young adults). If you want to score, you can't be the wild bull in the barn... even college students have limits on what they will tolerate and the deans have realized that controlling the source, controls the flow...with some help from the crowd.

The other benefit is that the drinking on and near campus results in fewer drunk driving problems as they can walk in largely populated areas with other students and they are hoping that the reinstatement of the 18 law will cut down on the drunk driving crashes and the incidences of students going missing and/or getting in trouble on their way back to campus...

[Rocco]

Just doesn't seem right to tell a vet who may have left an appendage in Iraq, that they can't have a drink.

I also think the tougher drunk driving laws have lowered drunk driving accidents. Deterrence works.

[PD]

I don't drink. And, thus far at least, none of my three kids do, either.

I know, anecdotal.

[sbw]

Too many confuse order with education. Having reduced the number of incidents by raising the drinking age postpones the education that needs to happen in the first place.

In school, when someone misbehaves, we send them to in-school suspension when we should be throwing them in full contact with a mentor.

When will we learn: prohibition never works.

When will we learn: prohibition is a Democrat's solution - putting a problem out of sight is just as good in their book as solving it, even if the next person down the pike will have to pay twice as much to deal with the problem that returns.

[Stephanie]

I also think the tougher drunk driving laws have lowered drunk driving accidents. Deterrence works.

For adults... the young folks still think they are "too smart" to get caught. And even after they do get caught, they still don't realize that maybe they are dumber than dirt... self-realization and the logic to evaluate your situation and come to the proper conclusions requires that your reasoning powers have been turned on in high school and college and, for now, that is not what the academics have in mind...

[sbw]

I carry with me a bum knuckle from getting kicked in a pick-up Sunday soccer game in my early twenties. The finger hasn't straightened since then. It's only a quarter inch shy of full extension and no physical handicap, but it serves to remind me of my mortality, even 40 years later.

Every immortal teen should get kicked in the finger as a reminder that sometimes what we think about ourselves ain't the reality we have to live.

[TCO]

you should be able to drink and smoke. Society is turning into a bunch of namby pambys. You don't want your kids to do something, discipline them yourselves...RINOs.

[dualdiagnosis]

I don't recall teens or college students very much interested in the ability to have two drinks and then stop.

[PeterUK]

TCO is a prime example of the perils of unsupervised drinking.

[sbw]

Where do teens/college students learn what they should be interested in?

"Should" has nothing to do with it. School is not well set up to expose kids to the life experience and wisdom of others.

Where, for instance, does one here about Seneca's "Letters from a Stoic" where he observed words to the effect that after the evening is over and the barrel has won, what have you gained?

[sbw]

here s/b hear

[Rocco]

Beer Pong has made the world a better place.

[bad]

You talking about FAS, PUK?

[Sue]

Just doesn't seem right to tell a vet who may have left an appendage in Iraq, that they can't have a drink.

Simple. Allow their military ID to make them legal age in order to buy a drink.

[Jane]

Since I can't stand another moment of news I'm watching the red carpet. If anyone says a word about Mr. President I'm throwing shoes.

[Ann]

I am with you, Jane. Hugh Jackman is looking fine!!!

[bad]

Hugh Jackman is delicious.

[sbw]

That's the best Nixon, Evah!

[Ann]

Meryl Streep looked like an unmade bed.

[Neo]

I don't drink. Well very little alcohol.
The case of Molson in my garage frig is 18 months old.

On the other hand .. Coke and Pepsi nearly killed me

[Jane]

Hugh Jackman is exquisite.

What's wrong with JOM - it wouldn't reload for an hour?

[John Bibb]

***
The legal drinking age should be 21 years old--with 1 exception.
***
Members of the military services 18 years old or older should have all drinking, voting, and contract privileges since they are already mature enough to make life and death decisions--their lives and the lives of others are in their hands.
***
Rocketman
***

[PaulL]

TM's new method for dealing with end of thread issue: put up so many posts at once, we never make it off page 1.

Binge posting.

[bad]

lol

[Barry Dauphin]

Lower the drinking age so young people aren't forced to watch the Academy Awards ceremony sober.

[Daryl Herbert]

When I was in Ireland, I think it was normal for 13-year-olds to order booze at a pub. I'll bet an enterprising 11-year-old could have gotten it.

There's no reason 18-year-olds should not be able to order booze with their meals, or drink booze when they are in their homes or at private parties.

[MayBee]

When we used to travel through Asia, the waiters always assumed our kids would be having a glass of wine with us at dinner.
I liked that, because I felt it was a good way for them to experience alcohol.

I think it is stupid that any 18 year old could end up with a legal problem for drinking. It is absolutely nonsensical to me.

[daddy]

Maybee,

Imagine what it must have been like for the generation that fought the horrendous battles of World War 1 to come home to Prohibition. No wonder my Grandad took overseas orders in 1921. San Miguel, ito ang beer!.

[Donald]

San Miguel is not a very good beer. Which unfortunately in my case led to much Mojo punch, which led to very bad episodes of "I don't remember a thing but I'm trying with all my might", laying at the end of the bench at softball games. Just saying.

[jorod]

I don't want binge drinking teen-agers behind the wheel of a car....

[sbw]

It's not the alcohol, it's the idiot behind the alcohol.

[daddy]

Donald,
Yours sounds more like a RedHorse PI brand hangover, not the classic painted label San Magu,...but to each his own.

[Donald]

You also don't want binge adult drinkers behind the wheel of a car, but I digress.

Daddy, I drank San Miguel, which I didn't really like, but then I drank anything including Ranier...loved the galloping beer bottle commercials. And I drank Mojo because I was stupid. This led to all kinds of idiocy as I'm sure you can well imagine. It is also very possible that I'm hazy on some incidents which I now deny after 25 years.

[cathyf]

Ok, this is bizzare -- page one has acquired a >> link, which I click on, and I very very briefly see a post from Donald which disappears leaving no posts on the page. Let's see if my posting changes anything.

[cathyf]

Oooo -- really freaky -- my post is there, and then if I hit Reload Donald's post is there for a second or two in front of it, and then disappears as the page finishes loading.

All that is on the

http://justoneminute.typepad.com/main/2009/02/alcohol-and-eighteen/comments/page/2/#comments

link. When I post I get the

http://justoneminute.typepad.com/main/2009/02/alcohol-and-eighteen.html?cid=

syntax, and if Donald's post is doing the peekaboo thing it's too fast for me to see.

[cathyf]

Ooo... and I checked the page source, and Donald's comment is there. It's direct link is

http://justoneminute.typepad.com/main/2009/02/alcohol-and-eighteen.html?cid=149654747#comment-149654747

You also don't want binge adult drinkers behind the wheel of a car, but I digress.

Daddy, I drank San Miguel, which I didn't really like, but then I drank anything including Ranier...loved the galloping beer bottle commercials. And I drank Mojo because I was stupid. This led to all kinds of idiocy as I'm sure you can well imagine. It is also very possible that I'm hazy on some incidents which I now deny after 25 years.

Posted by: Donald | February 24, 2009 at 09:12 AM

[daddy]

Donald,

Those Ranier Beer Commercials were wonderful weren't they. Too bad the beer wasn't as wonderful as the guys on motorized lounge chairs with industrial sized bottle openers chasing down beer bottles. Subic finally shut down last week, but Clark is still wide open, so I imagine I have a few hundred more San Magu's to chase down before they put me out to pasture. Mahgondong gabi.