From David Harsanyi, writing in the Denver Post:
What happens when presidents from more than 100 of the nation’s best-known colleges call on lawmakers to consider lowering the drinking age from 21 to 18? Well, a brigade of hyperbolic mommies start screaming at them, that’s what.
In the Amethyst Initiative, college presidents have offered a rational, if counterintuitive, plan. Let’s stop treating young adults like wards of the state. Mothers Against Drunk Driving (naturally) replied: No debate allowed.
There is plenty of empirical evidence suggesting that the drinking age of 21 is counterproductive. To begin with, it bars parents from educating their own children about alcohol and, like all prohibitions, it fosters criminality.
“Kids are going to drink whether it’s legal or illegal,” explains Johns Hopkins President William R. Brody. “We’d at least be able to have a more open dialogue with students about drinking as opposed to this sham, where people don’t want to talk about it because it’s a violation of the law.”
Sham, indeed. It begins with the demonization of alcohol. (Mothers Against Drunk Driving once compared alcohol to heroin.) Imbibing is a satisfying and highly pleasurable way to spend a couple of hours. It is completely harmless for the majority of adults. Let’s not pretend otherwise.
And by outlawing even the moderate use of alcohol among young adults, society creates a forbidden fruit. It drives students off campus and underground. It creates an incentive to drink as much as possible in the shortest amount of time possible.
[…]
The present drinking age, it can be noted, treats 18- to 20-year-old adults as if they were criminals, pre-emptively outlawing them from partaking in a legal product that other adults  even adults convicted of drunk driving or serious felonies  can enjoy legally.
Every state has the authority to set its own drinking age. They won’t. After the 1984 Congress passed the National Minimum Drinking Age Act, the government blackmailed states by threatening to take away 10 percent of federal highway funding.
There is no politician who has the audacity to take on MADD, anyway. No one wants to be accused of willfully hurting children.
Yet, even if MADD were right, the safety of the “children” should never be the sole basis for public policy. Call them naïve or idealistic, but there are still people in this country who believe the word “freedom” matters as well.
If I may indulge, let’s extrapolate on a cliche: It’s regularly pointed out that young adults can volunteer to serve in Iraq but are prohibited from buying a beer. But young adults are also free to produce children (many children). A young adult can plan the entire course of his or her life by the age of 21. A young adult can serve on a jury and determine the fate a fellow citizen. If a young adult chooses, he or she can act in pornographic films, gamble nightly, smoke several packs of cigarettes or, in some places, even engage in the truly depraved act of becoming a politician.
Yet this same young adult is breaking the law when ordering an appletini?
It makes little sense. And when a large number of college presidents ask, “How many times must we re-learn the lessons of Prohibition?” the answer is: We never learned the lesson the first time.
There is much to dislike about European culture — resentment of the US and ungodly techno music figuring prominently in that litany of evils — but for all its soft socialist ways, in certain spheres of personal freedom European social planners, along with their policy-making handmaidens, remain maddeningly more concerned with individual autonomy and the role of the family in the lives of children than our own do-gooder nannystatists, who routinely invent “crises” in order to justify encroaching on what should be private concerns.
After the Orioles won the World Series in 1983, Storm Davis, a then-20-year-old starting pitcher for the Birds, who played an integral role in Baltimore’s success, could not partake in the post series champagne and beer celebration.
Mother Against Drunk Driving would likely counter such a seemingly arbitrary and incongruous segregation among teammates by noting that the ritual of celebrating with alcohol “glorifies” drinking, and so should itself be eliminated.
— And at that point, it should become clear that MADD is no longer worried about drunk driving per se, but is rather become a neoprohibitionist organization trafficking in emotional arguments to convince cowardly politicians to force change upon the culture — “change” that has the effect of taking away individual freedom and responsibility, along with the role of parents in teaching young adults how to handle certain freedoms, in exchange for a government run mandate, complete with police powers of the state or municipality, that presumes to usurp those responsibilities by a kind of 3/5 rule on adulthood.
Exchanging white hoods for big buttons and a lot of emotional appeals merely suggests a change in rhetorical strategy from those who seek to build society to match their own personal hobby horses.
Nothing classically liberal about that — not to mention that turning water into wine these days would likely result in 100 hours of forced community service work, an orange vest covering your flowing frock, your staff replaced by one of those pointy sticks used to pick up coffee cups and Almond Joy wrappers…
But Jeff, MADD has ALWAYS been about prohibition. They figured they’d start with the children first this time and maybe avoid the rum runners.
EPIC FAIL!
Great point in regards to Europe. I don’t hate Europe, nor do I love Europe, but that, too, is one of the ways in which I envy Europe. I saw this article the other day and thought to myself, about fucking time. Sometimes, even the progressive academics get it right.
MADD has always been a neo-prohibitionist group.
For the old farts, what was the justification given back in the day for raising the age to 21 in the first place? When my parents were growing up, it was still 18 IIRC.
Not so, brian. One of the founders of MADD is, in fact, an outspoken critic about what they’ve become.
An excerpt of Harsanyi’s book (which I was fortunate enough to read and comment on in its very early stages) deals specifically with the “evolution” of MADD.
David still hasn’t sent me a copy (Hi, David!), but I think an excerpt in Reason covered this. Will try to find it.
Here it is, all.
Sometimes you feel like a nut.
Back in the day, I saw a bumper sticker for DAMM (Drunks Against Mad Mothers).
I wonder if those are still around?
I spent my junior year of college in England, where the legal drinking age is, I think, 16 if you’re with your parents and 17 if you’re on your own. The people I was friends with were a few years younger than I — I turned 21 that year, and most of my friends turned 18 or 19 — and most of them were not crazy silly drinkers. By “not crazy silly drinkers,” I mean, they drank enough to get a mild-to-decent buzz on a regular basis, but rarely drank themselves into vomiting, out-passing, embarrassing-episode-causing oblivion.
But on the other hand, there were plenty of students their age who were crazy silly drinkers, i.e., regularly drank till they puked, passed out, and had to be medically treated (though not necessarily in that order).
All of these kids were subject to the same laws growing up, which suggests (albeit small sample size and all that) that the drinking age really doesn’t mean squat. The difference here, as in so many other things, I am sure, has to be the kind of guidance one receives from one’s parents.
For millenia, 13-year old males would stand before the congregation and declare “Today I am a man”. A baker’s dozen years was considered enough to learn what is expected of a productive adult member of a society that places a very high value on education.
Now that we’re all advanced, sophisticated, and nuanced, you have to be
161821 to really be considered an adult, even with progressive policies like universal state-sponsored education.Instead of that teenager taking his place behind a plow, or apprenticing with a master craftsman, in an environment where he is a young adult among a variety of ages of adults, we warehouse him in an institution where his narrow cohort outnumber more mature adults by 25:1 or worse odds, and wonder why a Lord of the Flies mentality rules.
We tell him that it is illegal for him to work (with certain exceptions) until he’s 16, and even then there are many kinds of work he can’t do; just wait until you’re 18, but then you still can’t drink, gamble…. We bombard him with media messages that he is a Consumer, entitled to buy whatever bling is declared fashionable this month, without the idea that he should actually earn what he’s consuming.
I took the kids to the old hometown of Bremen, Germany a couple of weeks ago. I remember when I was a nipper there that if you could reach the bar to put your money down, you were old enough to get served. Me, the kids, my nephew and dad would be sitting in restaurants, hotels or bars, and no one looked twice at the kids having a sip out of my beer. Which is the way it should be. This mystification of alcohol encourages binge drinking when they are finally “old enough”. Beer and wine are a part of mealtimes and life in general. I really don’t get how you can tolerate the temperance league. Yeah, drunk driving is moronic – so educate and socially stigmatize, along with educating about sensible alcohol use. Why the rush for prohibition?
I must have had my first sip of beer before I was 12. I knew the taste of wine and hard liquor long before it was legal in California (where the legal age was 21 as far back as I can remember). I’ve been fairly ripped more than once, but the only time I ever threw up while drunk was after having strawberry margaritas at a party where the music was way too loud. The alcohol probably contributed greatly to the whole thing, but I wasn’t so drunk that I didn’t know the loud music was contributing a lot.
Unfortunately, by the time I went outside for some air and some quiet, my fate was already sealed.
MADD is a gay nazi collective. They are no more respectable than PETA I don’t think. But kids need to throw a little civil disobedience into the mix or fuck em I think.
Oh, and Puck, you can drink beer or wine in a pub or restaurant in the UK at 16, but an adult must buy it. You can’t buy alcohol in the UK until you are 18.
When I was a bartender, that same rule applied Silver Whistle. A parent could buy their child a beer. I don’t know if the laws changed, in all honestly, and this rule was explained to me in detail way back in the late 80’s when I bartended in a college town. Parents would come visit, and buy their underage kid a drink.
Great post Jeff! Here in California the laws against drunk driving get stricter and more draconian seemingly ever year. The legal definition of drunk driving here is a blood alcohol content (BAC)of .08 or higher. I once read of a study showing that talking on a cell phone while driving creates a greater driving impairment than a .08 BAC, yet there was no political will to ban driving while yammering on the phone. (Recently, the state did require hands-free phones, which studies say do not reduce the level of impairment, but are very fashionable).
The fact that people caught driving with small amounts of BAC are given terrible punishments, while drivers are free to yammer away on the cell phone as much as they want leads me to conclude that the laws reflect the comparative cultural stereotypes about drinkers and cell phone users more than any genuine concern for safety.
I stand corrected, Jeff. I had read that article when it was published, I guess that point never stuck in my gray matter.
Of course, it doesn’t change the new fact that MADD would dearly love to end the consumption of alcohol.
My sister was killed by a drunk driver while attending Marquette, in 1968 (she was 18). He was coming home from a wedding reception. She was with her boyfriend, headed back to campus from a movie.
MADD are women who have lost loved ones to drunk drivers, not drunks. Their founding principles were sound, and to call them Nazis is self-condemning stupidity. This thread is full of stupid innuendo, however.
“MADD are women who have lost loved ones to drunk drivers, not drunks”
should have been MADD are women who have lost loved ones to drunk drivers, not mere drunks.
Sorry. Flame on….
I was drinking in bars at 18 in Texas. They tried it that one year (1979) and then extrapolated a few students per high school getting buzzed at lunch as a catastrophe threatening the good order of Texas public education. So, back to 21 as a limit because rather than recognize that a minority of any alcohol consumers get stupid (along with a minority of retail shoppers that shoplift, automobile operators that drive with their head up their ass, white collar businessmen who sell the same margin to ten clients, moms OD’d on mood levelers while bathing baby, etc, etc) and they must be treated as adults on a case basis rather than denying the rights of adults to franchise holders, as well prospective members of the military.
I say leave it at 21. Just take away the vote, and make enlistment age 21, too, since if you aren’t adult enough to drink in the eyes of the state, fuck all if you should be ready to stand in the line and offer your all, right?
Oh. Sorry. Looking for logic out of our legislators. Hoo boy what was I THINKING?
DAM. Mothers Against Dyslexia.
Never tried going after the parents. Didn’t try dealing with the kids on an individual, “you are responsible” basis.
MADD then and MADD now are not the same thing. See MADD founder Candace Lightner quoted in the link in Jeff’s #5. Also see this. Perhaps Nazis is a tad strong, but it isn’t completely off the mark as they’re proud to be totalitarian.
DAMM – Drunks Against Madd Mothers
No for real they are nazis complete with reeducation programs and also they are big on making crimes unexpungeable, which is a very nazi thing to do.
They’re missing the ovens, ‘feets. For now.
Well yeah but making someone unemployable for life is the next best thing to cooking them really. MADD should be scorned and shamed as the neurotic bitch nazis they are I think.
Sorry. Self-righteous neurotic bitch nazis I mean.
They are getting some traction with the yellow star.
I’ll drink to that.
I’d better not see anything about Obama being a baby-killer because he opposed three born-alive protection bills, at this site, if this site can so cavalierly ignore 17,000 alcohol-related fatalities by spewing what amounts to support of drunk driving in the name of liberty.
I’m not calling for devices on cars, and I oppose government interference with my life. But I am willing to support government interference with a woman’s life when she wants to kill a third party, a living, human life. The comments on this shrilly ridicule and condemn efforts to save innocent lives (17,000!). It is repulsive. It’s like reading a feminist celebration of abortion as a new sacrament, and any efforts to regulate abortion as Nazi attempts to enslave women.
Drunk driving must be condemned because of its toll, and suppressing it should be supported. It seems to be celebrated here as innocent cavorting when it is anything but that.
Yes, Geezer. Won’t someone PLEASE think of the children?
I think the yellow star is wrong and really evil and if I knew someone with a yellow star I would think that really is sad that for the rest of his life he has to have a yellow star and be a stained and compromised person even in the eyes of people who aren’t particularly judgey cause there it is… he’s different and wrong and he almost killed little babies, goddamn bastard … I don’t know who hired the fuck with the yellow goddamn star but I want him out of here in 60 days. Hey what happened to Jason? Oh didn’t you know? He had a fucking yellow star. Oh. One of those.
A life is a life, whether it is 1 hour or 18 years or 70 years old.
Won’t someone think of the old people, the middle aged people, the 17,000 people whose lives were cut off by drunk drivers? The wives, the husbands, the grandparents, and yes, babies?
Or is Protein Wisdom only open for support of irresponsible hedonism?
In that case Geezer, the logical step is to ban alcohol entirely. You are making the jump that equates all drinks with an inevitable drunk driving episode. That’s a pretty big leap, IMO.
Well, the last person to have an informed opinion on this topic is a tee-totalling Mormon, so consider me off the thread.
However, I do want to know which one of you morons hiding behind a pseudonym went and did all this.
Cuz if it wasn’t a P-dubber, it was someone over at AOSHQ.
Geezer, I don’t see in this thread what you seem to be seeing. Mothers Against Drunk Drivers did start out good. It has changed its focus, as such organizations do after so many years and so much success at their initial mission.
Flaming people in this thread isn’t going to bring back Candy Lightner’s daughter or your sister or any of the other 17,000 people you obviously care deeply about. It’s also not going to contribute substantively to a discussion or make anyone here interested ever in hearing what you have to say about this.
Go, cool off, and come back when you can see straight.
Drunk driving must be condemned because of its toll, and suppressing it should be supported. It seems to be celebrated here as innocent cavorting when it is anything but that.Geezer, I lost a brother to a drunk (uninsured) driver. So I have Absolute Moral Authority. Everyone else has to shut up now.
There’s a difference between supporting drunk driving and supporting the right of an adult to have an adult beverage. MADD seems not to recognize that difference, which is why their own founder had to quit the group now that it’s become full-on Prohibitionist.
dammit, that was supposed to be a quote. Where’s the fracking Preview button!
I didn’t see anyone here excusing drunk driving. Maybe I am reading the comments wrong.
Face it, Ronald Reagan hated 18-20year-olds!
Geezer, opposition to requiring interlocks in every vehicle, paid for by every driver, is not support of drunk driving. Drunk drivers are horrible recidivists. Put interlocks in their cars. Forcing every driver in America to prove their sobriety every time they get in the car, and to pay for the privilege of doing it is insane.
There’s a difference between supporting drunk driving and supporting the right of an adult to have an adult beverage.
Exactly. Geezer and MADD don’t understand this. It’s exactly the same argument that the gun grabbers, and the cigarette nazis, and the witch burners have used down through the centuries.
“You don’t support [insert ridiculously overblown draconian response] to [insert harmful phenomenon]? You must be in favor of [harmful phenomenon]!”
How about charging a drunk driver that kills someone with Manslaughter? Oh wait they already do that carry on.
Geezer, opposition to requiring interlocks in every vehicle, paid for by every driver, is not support of drunk driving.
Maybe we should require all men to wear a steel chastity belt, the combination to which is kept at the local police station.
Moronic idea, you say? Why are you in favor of RAPE?
And when we get done with that, we’ll need to put cell phone jammers in every car too, whatever those cost. FOR THE CHILDREN™!
™ stupid HTML.
No one has brought up Liddy Dole yet?
Apparently theGeezer missed the part of the post where MADD morphed from Mothers Against Drunk Driving into the Temperence League. I thought I made the distiction between drinking and drink driving clear. I don’t remember anyone else treating the issue as being
…celebrated here as innocent cavorting when it is anything but that.
Where did that come from?
Being over 21, it’s not really an issue I care too much about, but I really don’t know how we can expect a young man to die for his country but he can’t take a drink.
Drinking, assuming it should be legal (questionable to MADD), should be allowed at the age of 18/19. I’d prefer 19, because that would keep it out of high school.
Yes, dicentra, it is I. James Boppre is such a stupid name and Canadian is such a ridiculous nationality that I am forced to adopt the screen moniker of Silver Whistle.
Or is Protein Wisdom only open for support of irresponsible hedonism?
No, that would be Ace of Spades HQ. P-dub is for responsible hedonism.
What about hedonism in general?
Cause what about have sex in cars?
#47
Well said.
Well, I can’t speak for everyone, but I certainly don’t support drunk driving. But I also don’t support neoprohibitionism — which is what MADD is now promoting.
Funny thing is, I could be dry myself and still believe the same thing.
I just want everybody to get home safe.
“Not my fault. I only suggested to the bear that maybe he might want to pass a snout through this part of the woods here that he’d been overlooking for a while, maybe fist a couple beehives. I didn’t tell him to shit there.”
Please.
Of course, as an “If you’re for any law, you’re for all of them” kinda guy — “structural imperatives” and all that — easy for me to say.
But there’s an obscure old-timey legal principal called “negligence” that evolved partly as a vaccine against the state’s universal and universally unhealthy interest in things — and you guys ought to be familiar with it from your own arguments against “sensible restrictions” on certain other demonic totems — so it’s easy for you to say, too.
…
I went back over my posts and I do not think I flamed anyone. Who? I apologize if I did.
The comment like “Won’t someone think of the children?” (a standard ridicule of an incessant liberal mantra) struck me as making light of the serious matter of drunk driving, which drew out my hyperbolic remark about hedonism. It was not my intention to assert that about PW literally.
also seems to make light of a serious problem.
Geezer, a thread about MADD is an appropriate place to discuss what can be done to reduce deaths caused by drunk driving — BUT such a discussion has to start by acknowledging things that won’t accomplish that end, and MADD’s campaign to ELIMINATE TEH ALCOHOL is one such thing. Carry Nation (new model, with lawsuit instead of axe) can and will accomplish nothing except to make matters worse.
If you dig around and find honest statistics — no, I’m not doing it for you; I might be a liar; find them yourself — what you will discover is that fatalities where a driver with under 0.1% BAC was involved are statistically indistinguishable from those where no alcohol at all is detected. The drive for .08% BAC as the standard is pure and simple nannystatism, and lazy cops and greedy JPs the country around have seized upon it as a revenue enhancer with literally no impact on safety. It is the precise, exact equivalent of a speed trap, placing an arbitrary requirement which is meaningless in terms of safety or proper operation, then enforcing it vigorously for all that loverly cash.
If, on the other hand, you begin to investigate fatalities in which one or more drivers had BAC above 0.1%, you will discover that the likelihood of fatality increases with increasing BAC, peaking somewhere around 0.25% and then declining (because a driver with that high a BAC is likely to be asleep rather than operating the vehicle.) You will also discover a curious fact: a drunk driver with a high BAC is less likely to be prosecuted than someone with low but nonzero blood alcohol. In other words, the net result of MADD’s tactics in recent years has been to make it easier for murder-level drunks to get away with it, while handing lazy police departments a dependable revenue stream.
Myself? I’ve done a bit of drunk driving, and never killed anyone — but that was pure chance. I got away with it. A lot of folks don’t, and genuine drunks ( over 0.2%) ought to be hammered, hard. I’m the guy who proposed the Fatal Breathalyzer: the tube is the barrel of a twelve-gauge shotgun. No lawyers involved, and damn little recidivism… but if you set it at .08, you’re just a murderer.
Regards,
Ric
I await the lawsuits when a woman who just spritzed Binaca can’t start her car to escape a suspicious individual who followed her out of the bar…….
Seems unlikely to me, Ric. Not that I’m doubting your veracity but how can this be so?
Too bad that even this side of the Pond some are seriously proposing to increase the legal drinking age and all sort of prohibitions.
The comment like “Won’t someone think of the children?†(a standard ridicule of an incessant liberal mantra) struck me as making light of the serious matter of drunk driving
It’s making fun of neoprohibitionists, not making fun of the “serious matter of drunk driving”. Nothing “liberal” about that (except perhaps in the classic liberal/libertarian sense). In fact, the so-called “liberals” are in the forefront of many “for-your-own-good” soft-fascist movements.
As I noted, “opposition to MADD” and “support for drunk driving” are two entirely different concepts.
Back in the day, I saw a bumper sticker for DAMM (Drunks Against Mad Mothers).
Again, making fun of MADD. Not making fun of drunk driving per se. Stop conflating the two.
As I said before, your argument boils down to “You don’t support [insert ridiculously overblown draconian response] to [insert harmful phenomenon]? You must be in favor of [harmful phenomenon]!â€Â.
Also, I do not accept your position that there are taboo subjects about which one may not make jokes.
“…but I really don’t know how we can expect a young man to die for his country but he can’t take a drink.”
The service is voluntary. Don’t some states have different drinking ages?
They lose federal funds if they dare beat back against the centralized tide.
Irrelevant, bigbooner. If we can (and we do) entrust young men with the safety of our nation (and with really fucking cool big guns) certainly they can handle the responsibility of alcohol.
MADD should change their name to INSANE.
In the seventies, I couldn’t buy a DWI. I think that getting the true drunks off the road was a worthy endeavor. But .08? I could have blown that three days after I stopped drinking.
And the nazi cops who follow you until you touch a line on the road and then stop you “for reason”? Every police department around here has one or two of these assholes, and they get awards for doing it!.
But the best thing about the seventies was when they lowered the drinking age to 18 in my state. That meant that half of the girls in the bar were sixteen or seventeen. It was youngster heaven…(and I was a youngster then)
Now, though, I would have to call it “Grampaw goes a-drooling'”. I don’t go to bars much anymore, except when I have to play. But sometimes I think I should just claw my own eyes out before I even get there. After seeing what I’ve seen, if I had a daughter, I would probably chain her to her bed at the onset of puberty, and guard the door with a shotgun.
Don’t worry Techie… there won’t be any bars.
It’s not the booze. It’s the cars. There should be no “drinking” age, but an age limit on purchase. There should be a higher driving age.
Almost 30k of the 43k people killed in car accidents were men, maybe if we didn’t allow men to drive at all we’d save 30k lives.
LMC, you’d let those 13,000 women die? SEXIST!
Also we should ban PSAs. I don’t really have a good reason for this I just don’t like them.
most of them were not crazy silly drinkers. By “not crazy silly drinkers,†I mean, they drank enough to get a mild-to-decent buzz on a regular basis, but rarely drank themselves into vomiting, out-passing, embarrassing-episode-causing oblivion.
At 3-pounds-fifty for a pint of London Pride, what 18-year-old can afford to get hammered over there? I’m not down with the university crowd anymore, but I never saw a 50p-shooter night when I lived in the UK.
I’m skipping down here without reading the all the comments because I need to address
Aldo @ #15
The fact that people caught driving with small amounts of BAC are given terrible punishments
Disclaimer… I think MADD crossed the line into neo-prohibition long ago and I agree that the “demon rum” approach is not practicable. However, as someone who has 10 years of clerking in the DA office in California, I don’t believe at all CA’s drunk driving laws are “terrible”
First time DUI? … first off it is misdemeanor 2-part charge .. the DUI and the over .08 BAC. That’s because if you’re under the influence of cold medicine, prescription drugs, pot, meth, etc, you can still be charged under the “a” count (DUI). The “b” count deals specifically with alcohol. Come in with a BAC of .08 or .09 and you can usually plea it out to a wet-reckless charge so no DUI goes on your DMV record, though one still has to do AEP (alcohol education program) and pay fines and fees (fine runs about $1500 right now). Most first time DUI’s plea to the “b” count. No jail time. 6 months’ restricted driving priviledges (to/from work or school only).
2nd DUI, fines, fees, AEP, 45 days county jail (can be served weekends) 18 months restricted license.
3rd DUI, ditto 2nd plus 3 years REVOKED license
4th DUI – now bumped to felony and usually involves state prison time.
Now understand that by the time we see multiple DUI’s, these are people who are driving around with BAC’s of .2 and above. I’ve even see BAC of over .35 (hard core alcoholics who need a .1 buzz in the morning just to function). They are rolling accidents who never seem to get hurt themselves, but leave dead bodies and shattered families in their wakes.
If one wants to cut down on teens causing accidents, it aint the alcohol it is the AGE. Raise the age of getting a driver’s license to 18 and you’ll see accidents fall by huge percentage points.
Comment by Carin- sycophantic, brainwashed moron #1 on 8/22 @ 4:53 pm #
Irrelevant, bigbooner. If we can (and we do) entrust young men with the safety of our nation (and with really fucking cool big guns) certainly they can handle the responsibility of alcohol.
Not trying to fight here but actually I think your comment is irrelevant. The laws are what they are even if you don’t agree with them. You can’t be a cop until your 21 (even if you have been in the service). So these young folks know that they can’t drink and they join anyway. Maybe it’s just not that big of a thing to them. You have to set the high bar somewhere and evidently its been set at 21. On a scale of things important in this country being able to booze it up at 18-20 is way down on my list. There’s enough “responsible” people out there already.
Ric
IIRC, the reason the BAC was lowered to .08 is because so many people were letting .1+ slide by. I agree that .08 could be a good buzz but not “drunk” but if you’re driving 85 mph on a freeway, you’re reaction time is everything and a .08, .09, .1 driver is not competent … as opposed to rolling home at 30 mph where you might take out a mailbox.
There is nothing “lazy” about getting people serious about having a designated driver or sleeping it off at your host’s place until morning.
“Comment by thor on 8/22 @ 12:21 pm #
Face it, Ronald Reagan hated 18-20year-olds!”
Can we outlaw Republican Rage?
Darleen, believe it or not, I am sympathetic with your position. BUT —
Brief excursion: Even after 55 was revoked, the State of Arkansas kept the speed limit at 60 across Interstate 30 between Texarkana and Little Rock. This is a good road, designed for 80 (I knew one of the engineers), with very few towns and/or entrances and exits. The message that gives people is not “speed kills”. It is “the people putting up speed limit signs are stupid, venal, or both”, and the net result is that all speed limits become questionable — after all, it’s the same idiots marking the school zones…
Stupidly overreaching laws do not result in “tighter control” unless you have both the will and the resources to set up a Schutzstaffel. What they do result in is total disrespect by the populace for the police and their support groups, such as yourself. Once upon a time the California Highway Patrol was a highly-respected service whose primary assignment was being traffic wardens, and CHP officers could count on the aid and support of the citizenry. Double Nickels destroyed that mutual respect, and nowadays the seven-pointed star simply means another arbitrary authority to be evaded or defied.
I have often wondered why you (as exemplary of “the police”) put up with it — why it is you don’t stand on your hind legs and tell Legislatures and City Councils, “look, dumbasses, this isn’t going to work. The more intrusive we are, the less cooperation we’ll get, and the more you’re going to have to spend on making us more intrusive.” Knowing, as you do, that the Lege is not going to give you the resources you need to enforce the ninnyhammer nitpicking nannyisms, and your attempt to do so is simply going to reinforce the idea in the minds of the populace that you are simply vicious and silly, not worthy of respect or cooperation, to be avoided, evaded, and sneered at.
Right now, right there in Sacramento, if somebody’s car gets stolen it’s gone forever — but if he is so socially irresponsible as to light a cigarette while waiting for the P.D. to show up and sign the report, he’s likely to get a $50 fine. If you think that helps you keep order in the city, I’m afraid you’re a very foolish person.
Regards,
Ric
Ric
I think you’ve seen me around here enough that I rail, gnash teeth, and generally rant about things that chap my ass, and that includes of the abysmal Nannystatism that exists in California … a place that fights the Feds on marijuana but has cities that outlaw tobacco smoking even outdoors.
I believe enforcement kinda varies from place to place. And that includes different PD’s. The tougher “real” crime is, the less likely the local cops are going to get in the face of someone with a stick of Marlboro within 20 feet of a county building entrance.
55 mph was a Jhimmi Carter’s sweater joke. Everyone hated it, especially out of the urban areas where 4 lane, divided highways stretched to the horizon with a handful of cars on ’em.
There is a lot of discretion, too, within individual DA offices, and I’ve been lucky to work with a bunch of mostly good honest DDA’s. Yes, I’ve known the assholes, too, that figure “Letter of the Law” trumps “Spirit of the Law” everytime.
I don’t know if those kind of vagaries will ever go away…at least not until homo sapiens stop populating the system.
All societies have to find a healthy balance; and that will mean there will still be tragic losses. Life always has risks, something our Leftist juveniles attempt to legislate out of existence.
But I suppose MADD has gone the way of many a “good cause”… one achieves their main goal and then refuses to pack up the office and turn off the lights — it just goes off to find a nit to blow up into an elephant and VOILA, the organization is back in bizness.
Human fucking nature again.
Please do understand, Ric, that I find myself tilting at windmills each and every day. And I will continue to – write blogs, pester my local gubmint officials, speak out at city council meetings, etc. There is only one thing I won’t do and that is run for office.
I do have SOME standards.
Darleen,
I think I’ve been around enough for you to realize that I’m no knee-jerk libertarian, either. Communities need wardens, marshalls, and directors, and some of those will occasionally need to use violence to help keep order. Still, though, as I get older I am more and more convinced that the single biggest mistake ever made by U.S. society, slavery not excepted, was the adoption of Peel-pattern civil police.
The problem is that laws tend to be made by people with special interests. We know about and rail against lawyers complicating the system in order to increase demand for their services, but to my mind the real damage is done by real estate agents. They make their living in big chunks separated by periods of idleness, leaving them plenty of time to meddle, and their focus on Maintaining Property Values (defined as seeing to it that nothing is visible that Victoria Regina wouldn’t have been familiar with and approving of) means that they are constantly agitating for nitpicking regulations. Horrors! That vicious scofflaw has parked his RV a full foot too close to the curb! — meaning two SPD officers in full musth get to spend half an hour investigating, issuing the ticket, and arguing with passers-by. That’s half an hour that they don’t spend finding out who’s responsible for the ten or fifteen cars that were stolen yesterday, and the picture that builds in the minds of the citizenry is of a group that doesn’t give a damn about stolen cars, muggings, robberies, etc., but is hell on minor bullshit that accomplishes nothing but to intimidate. That, in turn, means that The Force attracts people who like being intimidating and confuse “fear” with “respect”, and the cycle builds. Oh, your house got robbed? ::yawn:: fill out the paperwork, nah, you’ll never see your stuff again, and by the way, there’s a city ordnance requiring you to pull your trash bins back from the curb except on pickup days, sorry, gotta write you up…
Once upon a time I got stopped by the CHP on 99 somewhere south of Sacramento, at two o’clock in the morning. There was one officer in the cruiser. He got out and came to my window with a flashlight, which he was careful not to flash in my eyes, and he didn’t ask me to get out and “assume the position”. Tell you how old I must be? Contrast with the late Seventies, when people were exchanging sniggers about “whiffing the chippies” on the Five. You have allowed yourself to be redefined, from helpers to meddlers, from “us” to “them”. The only thing I can think is that you (“you” as exemplary, not you personally) must think that’s a Good Thing, since you always seem willing to go along with the measures that lead inevitably in that direction.
Regards,
Ric
Back to the main thread of the article, it should be obvious that the increased drinking age probably contributes to increasing the amount of heavy drinking among those under 21 (and, hence, the number of drunk driving fatalities they commit). But decreasing the drinking age back to 18 probably won’t decrease the amount of heavy drinking, at least in the short term.
What is needed is to demystify the drinking experience. What would benefit most people growing up is an occasional beer or glass of wine with dinner when supervised by parents. Kids drink (and smoke, for that matter) because it’s cool and prohibited for them, yet adults do it all the time. Under the proposal above, eighteen year olds entering college will still have little or no experience with alcohol, which up to then will have been a forbidden fruit, and will furthermore be unsupervised for the first time. Furthermore, some high school seniors will be able to legally purchase alcohol, meaning they will play the same role for their social groups that the 21 year old college students play for college social groups.
Fixing the drinking problem at college campuses requires parental responsibility during the teenage years to both familiarize kids with alcohol while limiting it so that it’s not harmful. The current proposal does little to fix that problem, although it does take the first important steps towards realizing that harsher legal straitjackets are part of the problem, not the solution.
our own do-gooder nannystatists
I wish I had a nickel for every time I’ve heard this lame-o insult hurled by some pseudo-libertarian. It seems that you want to have it both ways: insult Europeans and praise them for having decidedly more personal freedoms than Americans. Some say do-gooder nannystatists, others call it a democracy that actually serves the people.
The drinking age is 18 everywhere in Europe (although I have seen signs in many Spanish bars claiming adamantly that they refuse to serve anyone under 16). 18 years old unless you are with your parents or other adults, in which case I have seen toddlers taking a sip of wine. Could you imagine that in America? They would cart both parents off to jail.
It’s not just the drinking age, but the entire attitude about public drinking. Imagine trying to enjoy a beer at a public beach in America. Rodney King would feel lucky for what happened to him in contrast to what the police would do to such a villain. This same argument goes for marijuana as well. If someone screws up while high or drunk, we have laws to protect the public. Last time I checked, we already had laws on the books for drunk driving, pretty severe ones. Perhaps people drive drunk because America’s public transportation is so lacking. I have taken the NY subway drunk on many, many occasions and I never hurt anyone (maybe I slobbered on someone’s shoulder after passing out, sorry). If this person has not broken any laws, shut your cake hole and try to mind your own business.
Just about every country I know well in Europe is ten times more liberal than America. Why do they enjoy more personal freedom? Want to drink, go ahead. Don’t like abortion? Don’t have one. Pot? Don’t mind if I do from time to time. Homo? Go ahead and get married, don’t say I didn’t warn you. Far from a culture being ripped apart by these liberties, I see western Europe as incredibly family-oriented. Some places even pay couples to have babies…cash!
P.S. I also disagree about the resentment of the U.S. in Europe. Dislike of GWB yes (me, too), resentment of America noâ€â€as far as what this American has seen in years of living in Europe.
Oh, come now, Nick. Europe is entirely over-regulated. I lived in Bologna.
My post gives credit to certain aspects of European culture that, you are correct, are far more in keeping with what our founders intended than with what we now have. And that’s the rub: we have founding documents that lay this out, and according to those docs you simply cannot “serve the people” in certain ways that are temporarily fashionable. We’ve gotten away from that here, and that’s a shame.
Italy is no example of over-regulation; they can’t even take out their trash. Most countries in Europe see Italy as incredibly under-regulated with a central government not strong enough to take on organized crime.
People here bitch less than Americans about paying taxesâ€â€and they pay a lot more. They do complain when their governments don’t respond to their demands. Alcohol in public life in European countries should be our model, but I have spent most of my time in Mediterranean countries where I think they make mostly wise choices in this area. I couldn’t comment on drunk driving here as I read little about it in the press.
There is a lot we can learn from these societies. All of the knee-jerk negativity aimed at Europe (especially France) does America a tremendous disservice. European resentment towards America? I see a lot of resentment going the other way. In both cases it is counter-productive and ignorant.
Failure to pick up the trash doesn’t speak to the level of regulation, it speaks to the level of competence. But this
speaks toshrieks of over-regulation.In some ways, Europe seems under-regulated compared to America. Take consumer safetly laws, for example. They have a lot to learn from US. I can’t tell yo how much crap I have bought here that breaks almost immedaitely, sometimes in a rather dangerous fashion. It seems they are a bit too enomoured with cheap manufactured products from China that wouldn’t see an American retail shelf, and for good reasons. Like I said, we can learn from each other and each society has a lot to offer, from what I have seen. Or you can shriek about what a socialist hell-hole it is in Europe without actually bothering to see for yourself.
Here’s an op-ed that gets to the crux of the issue. Point to Europe on that one for having long understood the wisdom of this approach.
I lived in Germany for 3 years and traveled around Europe extensively. May I have an opinion now?
And that differs from America how? Try drunk driving in Germany. You won’t be feeling free, especially when they’re withdrawing blood by force.
Same question.
Don’t mind if I join you. But again, same question. How is Europe substantively different? Pot is not legal.
Only in Holland, Spain and Belgium. That leaves an awful lot of Europe where gays can’t marry.
Whereas those who hope to “liberalize” America wish to pay for abortions.
And, of course, Western Europe (in general; specific mileage/kilometerage may vary) is nowhere near as liberal as America in minor personal freedoms, like, say, freedom of speech or right to self-defense.
France, specifically, deserves more international scrutiny in many regards. The French government gets away with foreign policies which would never be acceptable to most Americans of any political leaning.
All I’m saying is both the USA and many countries in Europe have much to learn from each other. I find their way of doing certain things superior to the American method. But if you are more comfortable spitting on the ground every time France or Spain is mentioned, keep doing what you have to do.
That’s a mighty big “if” you’re swinging around there, Nick. Perhaps you might want to reconsider the sentence from which you clipped the phrase that seems to offend you.
That’s not exactly spitting at the mention of Europe, is it?
The drinking-age laws are a waste of time and treasure, disrespected even by college-age people who don’t drink, and counter-productive in making anyone safer. Axing them should be a no-brainer. But everyone who’s ever had a friend or loved one nailed by someone full of hooch is of the impression that this fact permits them to pronounce on public policy without using their brains.
Am I being a dick? Let me be clearer. Drunk driving is bad. People who drive while intoxicated should be punished. Raising the drinking age to 21 is still stupid. How do I know?
Because I’ve caused 3 accidents since I started driving. I was sober as a judge (and going no faster than 35 mph, just for our Double Nickels fans) for all of them. Each of them were caused by not paying attention to what was going on, which is, IIRC, the cause of the majority of driving fatalities.
Meanwhile, the same academics prohibit all smoking on their campuses–even outdoor. Take a look at UNC-Chapel Hill, which rammed a law through the state legislature allowing the university to set policy. The policy includes an outdoor prohibition of smoking within 100 feet of university property–whether on or off campus.
I’m sure my restaurant doesn’t abut office space the university has rented.
So, while I agree with the professors that this particular bit of social control that they dislike should be removed< I notice they recognize no principle of freedom when it comes to a tyranny like very much.
I am very sorry about the people that lost loved ones due to alcohol, in any way, shape or form…including drunk driving. At the same time, the same prohibitionist attitude and the activities it promotes will be more damaging than good.
Moms, go home a grieve. Stop taking out your frustrations on others because it’s the only, closest thing you can come up with for the focus your anger. It is well beyond constructive.
The other sickening thing about drunk driving laws is the legal infrastructure it needs to support it, which, MADD, you perpetrate. Like Jesuit Priests during a Spanish inquisition, that infrastructure NEEDS to arrest people and get them to pay with their time and money so the Police, jails, badboy driving clases, MADD’s BS classes, you name it….can maintain their petty existence. And, with the economy the way it is, you better believe they’re stepping it up a notch to get as much of that “justifiably obtained” income to support their jobs…..sickening.
My opinion, we need cops about 40% of the time…for real crime. The rest of this DUI and ticketing BS, for the most part, is just that , BS. Never talk to a cop without a witness around…if you talk to them at all. Sure, they’ll be nice and ask questions, fishing to see if you just might become an “object of their suspicion”. A couple of goody points for a cop to bring you in on ANYTHING is great for them, screwed for you…hours, days of your time and money wasted. Of course, the whole thing is set up such that if you DARE to disagree, argue, you may get the living crap kicked out of you, legally, and, of course, add to the time and money you have to bleed for them….sickening.
MADD and Cops, a good thing gone too far.