Vermont Considering Lowering Drinking Age to 18
Associated PressÂ
Proponents say the higher age hasn’t kept young people from consuming alcohol and has instead driven underage consumption underground, particularly on college campuses.
A movement is afoot to allow 18- to 20-year-olds to legally buy alcohol under some circumstances.
“Our laws aren’t working. They’re not preventing underage drinking. What they’re doing is putting it outside the public eye,” Vermont state Sen. Hinda Miller said. “So you have a lot of kids binge drinking. They get sick, they get scared and they get into trouble and they can’t call because they know it’s illegal.”
On Thursday, a committee of the Vermont Senate approved Miller’s bill to have a task force weigh the pros and cons of rolling back the drinking age and make a recommendation to the Legislature early next year.
Organizations and lawmakers in other states are toying with similar ideas.
In South Dakota, Flandreau lawyer N. Bob Pesall has drafted an initiative petition to allow 19- and 20-year-olds to legally buy beer no stronger than 3.2 percent alcohol.
In Missouri, a group is using the Internet social networking sites Facebook and Meetup to try to collect more than 100,000 signatures to get a measure on the ballot to lower the drinking age to 18.
In South Carolina and Wisconsin, lawmakers have proposed allowing active duty military personnel younger than 21 to buy alcohol. A similar proposal was rejected last year in New Hampshire.
And last year, former Middlebury College president John McCardell started Choose Responsibility, a nonprofit that favors allowing 18- to 20-year-olds to legally buy booze once they’ve completed an alcohol education program.
“We don’t simply advocate the lower age, but believe mandatory alcohol education and licensing with very strict enforcement for violations of the state’s alcohol laws might work,” McCardell said.
Typically, when states flirt with the idea, they quickly abandon it for fear of losing the highway funding, he said.
Vermont stands to lose about $17 million a year if it were to flout the federal government and lower the drinking age.
McCardell said an effort is under way to persuade Congress to grant waivers exempting states from financial penalty if they lower the age.
“If Congress would grant a waiver, the states would be willing to try something, and at least then we could get some evidence and see whether things are better or worse,” he said Thursday.
Politically, it’s a hard sell, in part because there are other public health hazards associated with excessive alcohol consumption, not just highway fatalities.
But proponents of a younger drinking age say alcohol-related highway fatalities were dropping before the legal drinking age was lowered, and argue underground drinking presents its own risks.
In 2006, 28.3 percent of youngsters aged 12 to 20 said they’d had a drink in the past month and 19 percent were defined as binge drinkers, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ National Survey on Drug Use and Health. The survey defined a binge drinker as someone who, in the past month, had drunk five or more alcoholic beverages within several hours.
Links:
Missouri 18 to Drink 2008: http://missouri18todrink.org
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[...] I just discovered a great new site called College Drinker, who writes that Vermont is considering lowering the drinking age to 18. [...]
keep this in mind….the federal government came down on Louisiana a while back to change our drinking age from 18 to 21 by withholding federal funding for major highways and interstates. Before the change, you had to be 21 to buy but you could consume at 18.
Didn’t know that about Louisiana.
Vermont also stands to lose highway funding. About $17 million. I believe they are hoping to recover some of that from sales tax on the sale of more alcoholic beverages.
it’s just so ridiculous, over here at the border we have to go to mexico every weekend just so we can get into a nightclub and drink, and that is more dangerous since we have to come back all the way from there to our homes, but i guess we’ll have to keep on doing it
Haha, 18 here in Quebec, Canada :)
I believe that if we lower the drinking age it won’t be as bad when you get to 21 and if you wait to long then that can be bad and you can go overbored and get really high and might even die. If you can risk your live by going to war and vote for the drinking age AND smoke shouldn’t you be able to drink??? This is what I believe not everyone is gonna feel the same way as I do.
lower the drinking age to 18 yeah baby
lower the drinking age now to 18 ……..Chicken duck
I think the drinking age should be lowerd to 18 in all the states the united states should just stuff a alcohol bottle in there butt and lower the drinking age, and get over all the teens dying its their choice not yours or the states ………………… yeah baby yeah , i have chicken legs bock,bock
It does not seem to be a problem in other countries so why is it such a big deal here. The only reason that so many people under 21 drink is because it is illegal if you make it legal then it will not be so appealing to so many people. 18 - 20 year olds can get into clubs and strip clubs but can not drink might as well not even let them in. All you have to do is put limits on everything. Simply they are going to get it one way or the other might as well let them have it.
me and adam are gay together
I think that the drinking age should stay 21! 78% of the car crashes that happen today are made by trunk teens 18 and under. If the lower the age, we will have a LOT more problems!
If the drinking age stayed at 21, it would not prevent the same things from happening again and again.
Why not lower the drinking age and teach people how to act responsibly when drinking, not just tell them to not drink.
If adults would just pay attention to what their children are doing maybe they could get a hint that there are unhealthy habits going on and raise their children to drink responsibly, not just be binge drinkers or be deathly afraid of being near alcohol in fear of being caught. This fear also what causes drunk driving accidents. Kids are so scared they’ll get caught that they won’t tell an adult that they are in trouble and they drive themselves home.
teach your kids to be healthy.
18 should be the age, if you are old enough to drive and die for your country you should be able to enjoy the freedom to drink alcohol.