Some great points here.
First up, let’s get down to the nuts and bolts. Either you are an adult under the law. Now the age of majority is a variation of the Numbers Game, but honestly unlike magazine capacity or barrel length there are obvious limits. A grade-school child OBVIOUSLY is not capable of entering binding contracts, the military doesn’t want them, and should not be consenting to sexual contact. Also if a person in their thirties who isn’t capable of making such decisions for themselves are likely deeply mentally ill, or mentally retarded.
The Numbers Game is that ugly little line in the sand that is set up for legal reasons to encompass most of the population. Sure I’ve known some 16-year-olds that were vastly more mature than some seriously immature 20 year olds, but 18 is a pretty good line in the sand. Most 18 year olds are finished or finishing High School and now under law get to choose what they do with the rest of their lives.
Still at this age of majority you still aren’t a FULL adult. You can join the military, you can enter binding contracts, you can get married without parental permission, ect. Still you can’t buy a handgun or buy alcohol. I’m sure there are a few others I’m missing but those are the big ones that are a part of my daily life.
So when you are 18, 19, or 20, what are you? You’re grown up by the law and can go off to college, or get a job and/or get married and move out on your own without parental concern, but still there are big parts of American life you can not do. Makes no sense to me.
Also while all of Julie’s points are good ones, one other factor I think one more to point out is just plain old experience.
Now I’m a bit odd as I elected not to drink until I was 21. Now note that with what Julie says. It was a CHOICE for me not to drink before I was 21, I had AMPLE opportunities to consume large quantities of alcohol before I was 21. Now this is without ANY interest in doing so. I had to actually TURN DOWN drinks on countless occasions. Compared to illegal drugs which were just as prevalent, I would have had to actively seek those out.
Still when I DID first become legal to drink, and released my own personal restrictions I got drunk. OH SO DRUNK! The first few months of my 21st year were filled with experimentation. I drank low-proof spirits like beer, cider, wine, and clarified malt beverages, and I drank hard liquor. I had to LEARN my limits, and learn the differences between different drinks and how they effected me. (Like you can drink down beers and by the time your tossing the empty bottle much of the alcohol in your system has entered your blood…but if you’re doing shots of booze you can finish drinking…and find yourself getting more and more drunk! THE HORROR!) But after a few months of this I generally knew what I was doing. Granted the learning continued, ie how to get messed-up drunk, but not uncomfortably sick was a tougher line to toe, and one these days I don’t bother trying to reach.
Still this makes me wonder, and maybe you in the comments can share your experiences. A lower drinking age means that that learning curve gets moved back a few years. So let me know in the comments, when did you start drinking (I assume the statute of limitations has expired if you, like most people started drinking before 21…and of course you can be as vague as you want) and how long were you a babe in the woods with the booze before you generally knew what you were getting into when bending your elbows.
In Wisconsin, it’s legal to drink underage provided you are with your parents. My parents happily let me try a sip of just about every beverage they had, usually resulting in me discovering that I hated whatever it was, until I started to develop a taste for alcohol as I approached 20. Part of the experience was that it was always about the taste of the beverage, rather than the alcohol content. While I’ve always been a very stable sort (Parents had a giant stash of booze out in the open and rarely checked, car keys left hanging in the kitchen, etc, through all my teenage years), getting the experience of “hey, alcohol is just another thing, and nothing special” probably was helpful.
Interesting, and thanks. I many states the law is like that. I know in Maine it is 100% legal for minors to consume alcohol with parental consent, but it is 100% ILLEGAL for kids to get drunk. So yeah the “Go ahead and have a sip of my beer” or my Wife’s Italian family giving her a small glass of wine with a family dinner was fine, but the moment the kid starts getting intoxicated that falls into “Abuse”.
For me I grew up in a similar house. My Dad drinks similarly to how I do now, one drink in the evening. I prefer it after dinner, he likes to enjoy a beer or cocktail before going to the dinner table. Still there were never locked cabinets, or marked bottles, and I don’t think Dad would have noticed if a beer went missing. Still I was like you, alcoholic drinks were just gross. Even more interesting is my philosophy for a “Good Drink” are bitter and/or savory drinks rather than sweet and/or fruity ones. As a teen my favorite soda was tonic water, but mass-produced tonic, while very bitter is also quite sweet, and as much of a gin drinker I am, I don’t like Gin and Tonic.
Honestly I didn’t start getting interested in alcohol until my first college party when I saw people having FUN drinking. I’d go to parties with my parents where adults were enjoying cocktails, but I didn’t see my parent’s friends as my peers. In high school I always heard about the troubled and misguided kids getting blotto on weekends, and it always sounded more like a train wreck than a good time. It wasn’t until college when I saw people my age really enjoying a drink.
By that time I was almost 19 so I decided just for fun I’d wait it out for a few years before joining them. Also meant at these parties I got to have fun being the designated driver.
Honestly, if you’re too young to be trusted with a handgun or a bottle of vodka, you’re definately too damned young to be deciding how a nuclear-armed superpower is going to be run.
Mor to the point, the ONLY reason the “age 21” limits exist in law was that was the traditional age of majority. (My mother had to get her father to sign her first work contract as a teacher and the lease on her first apartment because she graduated with her bachelor’s at 19.) And since voters were supposed to be adults, they were stuck at 21 for a while as well – the franchise was always limited to full adults.
Since we decided that age 18 was the appropriate age for voting (makes sense, especially since were were accepting 18 year olds for volunteer military service in a war and conscripting 19 year olds for combat service), that established the idea of 18 being the legal age of majority. ALL legal distinctions between someone who is 18 and someone who is 21 based solely on age are unsupportable.