<p>I find it funny how so many parents who strictly ban alcohol and manage their kids lives completely in high school freak out when they realize their kid is a college drunk. Parents need to teach their kids how to drink properly/ in moderation and how to avoid trouble.... don't keep them in a bubble.</p>
<p>Seriously. Get a life people. Just because you never had a childhood, doesn't mean your kids can't. Besides, if they're going to a good school, chances are they're not in the 3% that ****s it up royally and gets thrown out.</p>
<p>"Why is drinking so acceptable at college?"</p>
<p>Because it should be legal for students in that age group in the first place.</p>
<p>In my kids' school, for every 1 too strict parent there were 25 too-lenient parents. I know it's bad to be overly strict, but hey guys, that hasn't been a widespread problem with boomer parents.</p>
<p>Sweden has prohibitively priced alcohol. The US has a legal drinking age of 21. In Brittain, bars close so early it's not even funny. Those kind of cultural attitudes make alcohol a forbidden fruit that is irresistible for many youths. If you lower the drinking age, make alcohol not so pricey and make moderate consumption of alcohol socially acceptable you'll get better results than demonizing any drinking altogether.</p>
<p>Evidence please? (I'll give you a couple of dozen citations on the impact of the U.S. raising the drinking age to 21, if you like. This is NOT an unstudied area of the law and its impact.)</p>
<p>Are you sure about the early bar closing time in Britain? I heard they were about like ours here, but that they were thinking of extending them to go all night. Drinking is a big problem in Britain, with youths going on destructive rampages quite often. We don't have that, really, at least not as frequently. And check the alcoholism rate for France. It's actually quite high.</p>
<p>The pubs in Britain used to close early but now they're staying open later.</p>
<p>The drinking age is 18 I believe but it's not too hard to get served in pubs at an even earlier age according to my niece who lives there. And yes, SuNa, the NY Times ran a major article about the out of control drinking of young people and the rampages they went on.</p>
<p>I don't think Britain can be used as an example of how a lower drinking age encourages more responsible drinking.</p>
<p>I can tell you from personal experience that from the hundreds of teenagers I know, there has not been a single major alcohol-related incident among them. I read the papers and I can't recall any alcohol-related deaths at universities here in Montreal. </p>
<p>I think Canada is a good model for responsible drinking. We have a low drinking age and many older teenagers just see it as something casual. When I go for dinner with my friends, we order a drink or two--alcohol is not always something to use to get drunk, and Canadian kids understand that because we use it casually as well. It's not like we get to university, and boom!--all the booze we've ever seen. Even my high school guidance counselor has told me that when kids go away to American universities, they all say the drinking is out of control compared to here.</p>
<p>Let me toss out another thought here. Could the binge drinking be a function of something other than just a legal drinking age? Could it be a result of families spread out all over, or world tensions or a lack of real meaning in some kids lives. When it comes down to it, it doesn't actually seem all that logical that a drinking age of 18, 19, 20 etc would have <em>that</em> much affect on the outcome.</p>
<p>mini: Long read, but do take a look at figure 11 on page 32.</p>
<p>The point is that you need not target overall consumption to reduce problems such as impaired driving. </p>
<p>You can also compare the stats given in the above document to the US ones since you seem to have them.</p>
<p>You can also look at this PowerPoint presentation:</p>
<p>I heard two sorority girls at my school saying to each other:</p>
<p>"College is the only time when you can really drink. Before that, it's considered deviant behavior and afterwards, it's alcoholism."</p>
<p>Now am I the only one that sees something wrong with that statement? I mean, I guess they were just arguing that it's most socially acceptable during college but still...</p>
<p>By the way, I'm not really that much of a prude; I see nothing wrong with drinking in moderation, and in a way I can see a point in re-lowering the drinking age because it might cut down on binge drinking...</p>
<p>We now have more than 70 unnecessary posts. #2 had the answer: "Because they didn't learn responsible drinking when they were younger." This was from a German. They enjoy drinking, mostly wine and beer, including relatively young people, and have no college-level drinking problem.</p>
<p>"The point is that you need not target overall consumption to reduce problems such as impaired driving."</p>
<p>Ah, but the point is that, not only did raising the drinking age result in 26,000 fewer deaths (multiply by 10 for the number of serious injuries), it actually reduced underage drinking. Those were easy studies to undertake because, before 1984, there were contiguous states with different drinking ages, one which had changed the drinking age, and one that didn't.</p>
<p>The majority of American 18-21 year-olds are NOT in college, and the majority of those who are in college are not in residential colleges (as in Germany, where few colleges are residential.) The data suggest that the binge drinking problem (if there is one) is overwhelming a problem of cooped up college kids. </p>
<p>No one that I know suggests that these campuses where a small percentage of 18-21 year old reside should be made dry. The data that indicate huge differences among college campuses, sometimes outwardly very similar campuses with very similar student populations, suggest strongly that college policies and college cultures play a huge role in determining whether the campus will be home to a moderate or binge-drinking environment, and points in between. It isn't necessary to change national drinking ages to impact environments in which such a small percentage of 18-21 year olds actually reside. </p>
<p>I don't know if you noticed, but I actually agreed with your statement. It ISN'T necessary to target overall consumption to reduce problems. That's exactly why the drinking age of 21 has worked so well, and now it's the turn of college administrations to step up to the plate (if they choose: lots of students like things just the way they are, and I have no problem with that either, provided there is truth in advertising, so that prospective students can make informed choices.)</p>
<p>What you don't understand is that (artificially) reducing drinking among people under age 21 is a bad thing. Learning to drink responsibility in context, even from a relatively early age, and removing the forbidden fruit, produces better results.</p>
<p>Related article on excessive student drinking:</p>
<p>Not at Swarthmore??!! OMG. On a per capita basis that makes Swat the #1 school for arrested drunks.</p>
<p>My conclusion is that it would be nice to attend a college that didn't have too many (non-campus) policemen hanging arround looking for something to do. And, of course, the ability to walk rather than drive home from parties. Let's see, does that mean semi-official keggers in undergraduate dorms?</p>
<p>Could well be #1 in per capita arrested frat boys. Considering that there probably aren't 50 active members between the two frats, they've done a truly outstanding job of getting themselves arrested, kicked out of school, and sued this year. Saturday night was a semi pre-planned rumble between the two frats, stemming from an incident the previous week.</p>
<p>Note that it was the college who called the local police and asked them to come arrest a couple of the morons.</p>