<p>I have friends that grew up on two different military bases and they told me that the age was 18. I guess, like you said, some bases are just lax.</p>
<p>Maybe I should read the liner notes on a 'Cypress Hill' cd, but Im not a fan.</p>
<p>"Actually, on military bases the drinking age is 18."</p>
<p>I had a friend who told me this also after he visited his brother on a military base. I suppose the military police just don't enforce this rule.</p>
<p>i guess it all depends on where you go to college. here in madison, where bouncers are all college age, most bars will look the other way if the fake is reasonable, especially if it is a girl. underage drinking is essentially decriminalized in this town, although actully throwing a party is not. damn unconstitutional laws.</p>
<p>cubed, you missed the point. MADD is responsible for helping to maintain the neo-prohibition laws against adults under the age of 21. it is always easy for those over 21 to self-righteously defend a law that does not affect them, i guess as it is for any majority that is not marginalized. being a law does not make something implicitly right, although i suppose we are all to blame for this, since the federal highway funding act of 1984 has been in existence since the year I was born, and we voting age people still can't organize an opposition to it.</p>
<p>and the decrease in deaths from drunk driving is a trend that began in the late seventies, and held at the same rate through the 1980s since 1982, although laws weren't all in effect until the mid-1980s. It has continued to decline through the 1990s, and many would argue that increased enforcement and awareness of actual drunk driving laws have much more to do with it. Moreover, fatalities from drunk driving have actually increased in the 21-24 age group, so lawmakers really just shifted the age at which people will recklessly get behind the wheel. In fact, even conservative groups have noted that binge drinking has increased among those under 21. Is this because of an inherent immaturity in our age group? no, in fact it is exactly the same pattern that prevailed throughout all of American society during prohibition. </p>
<p>when people are told that something is unavailable specifically to them because they cannot hadle it, they will invariably maximize their use of it. moreover, lawmakers have done us all the favor of depriving us the ability to properly learn to drink responsibly. instead of being allowed to drink a glass of wine with our parents in restaurants as a natural part of aging, we are told that under no circumstances can we imbibe until we are of 21 years of age, at which point we can drink to our livers' content. this is exactly the opposite approach as that taken in europe, where individuals our age have much less of a problem with the "immaturity" that berkely girl spoke of.</p>
<p>there, alcohol is looked at as niether elixir or poison, but as a neutral part of responsible living.</p>