Here is an idea that requires going backwards to improve things.<\/p>\n
In the 1970\u2019s and 80\u2019s the drinking age was raised from 18 to 21.\u00a0 The expressed purpose was to reduce the number of deaths and injuries from drunk driving.\u00a0 It is a noble goal, which no one can reasonably oppose.\u00a0 But it has put us as a society in the paradoxical situation of telling young people they are old enough to vote and to defend the country but not old enough to drink.<\/p>\n
Do young people obey the law about not drinking?\u00a0 Only in the margin but they do learn that there are some laws that are not reasonable.\u00a0 Why not change the rule to an incentive based one that says \u201cYou may drink at 18 if you are a college student, have successfully taken a class, passed a drinking education test and have had no arrests.<\/p>\n
Young people would have an huge incentive to stay in school and do well.\u00a0 Additionally they would have an incentive not to speed, fight or be abusive.\u00a0 They would have had instruction in safe drinking, designated drivers and the danger of mixing drinks with sexual situations.\u00a0 A tamperproof ID card would alert bars to their situation.\u00a0 Perhaps they could only buy beer and not hard liquor.<\/p>\n
The blanket prohibition against drinking before age 21 doesn\u2019t work.\u00a0 It makes young people scofflaws and promotes binge drinking and other uncontrolled bad behaviors.\u00a0 It is time to rethink the laws we try to enforce about drinking.\u00a0 The new rules outlined above would align our laws with our reality and save lives.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Here is an idea that requires going backwards to improve things. In the 1970\u2019s and 80\u2019s the drinking age was raised from 18 to 21.\u00a0 The expressed purpose was to reduce the number of deaths and injuries from drunk driving.\u00a0 It is a noble goal, which no one can reasonably oppose.\u00a0 But it has put […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[7,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-178","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business-success","category-simon-says"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p99jGb-2S","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/simonburrow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/simonburrow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/simonburrow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/simonburrow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/simonburrow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=178"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/simonburrow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/simonburrow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=178"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/simonburrow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=178"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/simonburrow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=178"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}