At 5/10/08 04:11 PM, Proteas wrote:
I mean, screw my points, if you can't put forth a well thought out argument and cite how beneficial such a change would be to society, how do expect people to rally around you to help make the change?
Well maybe you have a skewed view on what is "beneficial" to society.
For instance, would someone who never ever drinks automatically have a leg up on someone who's just the same but drinks wine or beer every day and gets drunk occasionally?
To understand why alcohol is banned, I think you have to look at history. When it was banned in america, the religious people were in power and to them, drinking was a sin. It was sinful to do it, and seeing as the majority of the U.S. at that time was of the same religion, lawmakers banned it. But humans like alcohol. It was just too much to ask that they stop drinking it so they turned to crime to get it.
And so they had to legalize it as little at possible.
So the reason why it's so high has nothing to do with anything BUT religion and tradition at this point. You've self-inflicted a culture where people think it's a great adult privilege to get to drink when in fact it's not that great. Neither is smoking pot.
What SHOULD be restricted are ADDICTIVE things. I don't find alcohol addictive to the point where it damages you. You can drink 1-2 beers a day without any problem at all. Cigarettes on the other hand are addictive ( so they say ) and hard drugs like coke, heroine, meth etc.
It comes to a point where it's no longer a good time and where people fuck up their lives.
But alcohol is completely different, it's a great social drink, it's got a lot of history behind it. We're seeing tons and tons of new high-quality beers and wine sprout in america and I think it's a damn shame that LEGAL ADULTS can't get a sip at a restaurant or a bar.
And I know that if the age drops, you will see a rise in deaths for a couple years. But so what? That's price of being a fucking dumbass.
You know what should be legal later? Driving. 16 is way too low for a kid to drive. WAY too low. Driving should be made into a MUCH, MUCH bigger deal in america, but it's not in the culture. Driving has always been this "great social thing" that high school seniors get to do and getting your first car is this whole mystique, but it's a mistake to put a kid being a car, as it would be to put a kid behind a vote or a gun.
But a couple beers? Please. That's fear-mongering. There's always ALWAYS going to be those who abuse their freedom and I don't see why 99.99% of the population should have to suffer for it.
Quite frankly, alcohol should probably not even have an age limit to it. People should stop with the scary stories and just admit it: alcohol is a damn good time if you know how to limit yourself. The whole "SWEET, FINALLY LEGAL" mentality just makes people who have 0 experience with alcohol do really stupid dares and end up drinking too much and dying from overdose. And that goes for Canada as well. Excessive binge-drinking has become a problem because of the whole jackass/date mentality out there.
Is more banning the solution? Yes of course, it's a solution. It probably works. But is it the best choice a society can make, to ban something as soon as a couple people abuse it? I doubt it. Kids should SERIOUSLY be taught IN SCHOOL how much alcohol is LETHAL. It would rule if we had things like beer-tasting and wine-tasting in shools as a way to inform kids about alcohol and to make them appreciate this great product as more than a tool to dare each other to do stupid shit.