Pulaski

I think the British/ European approach of leaving it to the parents at home and in a restaurant setting i.e. drinking with a meal is most preferable. I was given cider to drink from an early age, and I remember my younger sister getting hiccoughs from drinking cider at age five, ..... at a church ploughman's lunch. (Try explaining drinking at lunch time, .... at a church event, .... when you're five years old, to Americans. ). We were given a glass of wine with Sunday lunch from the age of around 11 or 12, if I remember correctly, and none of this did either of us any harm at all.

Sally Redux

The kids get tanked up in secret before going out, which causes more problems than them spreading the drinking over an evening.

MarylandNed

Yes I'm familiar with the history of this one. Proponents are claiming a decrease in drunk driving fatalities since then but the fact is that overall traffic fatalities have also fallen due to safer cars, more widespread use of seat belts, air bags, etc.

One of the things that caused big problems was "border drinking" where teens would drive into a neighboring state that had a lower drinking age than their own. The response to this was to standardize the drinking age at 21. But standardizing it at 18 would have had the same effect in terms of eliminating the need for "border drinking".

Many US colleges support the Amethyst Initiative which is a movement started in 2008 to reconsider the national drinking age of 21. They think that lowering the drinking age would help colleges educate students on alcohol consumption and greatly reduce the problems associated with on campus drinking. My daughter goes to college in Ontario, Canada where the legal drinking age is 19. There are bars on and near campus that students can easily walk to if they want to enjoy a drink. My 2nd daughter goes to college in the US. I honestly don't see what advantage 21 has over 19.

SultanOfSwing

We were allowed to drink shandy from a reasonably young age. Occasionally I'd get a sip of unmixed beer or cider (or even wine) from my dad.

I was allowed to have a beer as a treat with a meal, from about 14/15, so I'd agree that with parents there should be no restriction for beer or wine (I'd still restrict spirits) but one should be able to walk into a pub or offie at sixteen without an adult present and buy a beer.

There is none, that I can think of.

Hotscot

I heard that heavy drinking at a younger age, especially binge drinking, increases the probability of alcoholism in later life.

MarylandNed

Understood but you have to have the cutoff somewhere. If a minor ceases to be a minor at 18, that would seem to be the logical legal drinking age. Going to war at 18 isn't good for your health either but the government doesn't seem to have a problem with that one.

srefre

On a simplistic level yes, but people behaviour and logic don't necessarily equate to the same thing.

I couldn't remember what I was reading, but this is actually quite interesting - The Effects of Gun Prevalence on Burglary: Deterrence vs Inducement

The big thing being guns are attractive targets for criminals to steal, so may actually increase the risk of burglary if a household owns a gun.

All of the above said, I don't think it is as simple as the arguments from either side make out. It's not a lab controlled experiment with only 1 variable, so it's much harder to predict and understand the true outcome on your life of owning or not owning a gun.

Anyway, enough thread derailing from me!

SultanOfSwing

Surely anecdotal at best. I started drinking at 16, did my heaviest drinking from 19-23, now I'm 35 and barely drink at all.

Early exposure doesn't lead to alcoholism - weak mindedness does.

SarahG

Pretty much the same for me. Started at 15. Most drinking done at Uni (19-22) then sporadic at best and now pretty non existent.

SultanOfSwing

It's not even by design in my case, I just have other things to do.

jibsymalone

Here, Here!

Pulaski

I started earlier, but really didn't drink regularly until AFTER I left university. I peaked later too, around 28-30, and it tailed off after that. I would like to have one or two 12oz beers every day with dinner, but even that has about stopped, for now at least. I'll usually get a 20-25oz beer when eating out.

My in-laws don't understand, they're almost tea total, and that a family (mine) could enjoy wine and beer responsibly at home, or in a restaurant, was a mystery to them, and my FIL said almost [i]exactly[i] that to me once. "Drinking" to them meant getting hammered, as likely as not on moonshine.

MarylandNed

Guns concern me although not having a gun also concerns me in case someone comes into my house in the middle of the night. One thing that really concerns me as a parent, is when my kids go to their friends' houses. You never know who has weapons and how they are stored. I'm very wary about getting into any type of altercation here in the US (e.g. driving) simply because you never know who or what you are dealing with. It could be someone with a gun in the glove box - possibly drunk or high on drugs.

Hotscot

Keep in mind that I'm not making the claim but this was part of the article I was reading a few weeks ago.

"In fact, children who begin drinking by age 13 have a 38 percent higher risk of developing alcohol dependence later in life, said another speaker Ting-Kai Li, MD, director of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), who also spoke at the briefing. The risk is even higher for those who start drinking early and have a family history of alcoholism."

http://www.apa.org/monitor/jan08/earlydrinking.aspx

MarylandNed

Right but I'm not sure what kids drinking by 13 has to do with a debate about having a legal drinking age at 18 vs 21. The selection if 21 is really an historical thing because 21 was once considered the age when young people became adults. That's a very outdated view. Today, a young person officially becomes an adult at 18. If you are adult enough to vote and go to war at 18, surely you should be able to buy a beer at 18?