Lowering the Legal Drinking Age?
There’s a movement afoot to lower the legal drinking age. The National Youth Rights Association, has been studying the effects of alcohol and the number of teen deaths in a handful of states in recent years, including Florida, Wisconsin, Vermont, and Missouri, where supporters are pushing a ballot initiative. They’ve shown that raising the legal drinking age from 18 to 21 (which happened in 1984) just shifted the statistics on driving fatalities from the 18-to-21 year-olds to the 21-to-24-year olds. And did nothing to stop teens from going nuts with alcohol.
The federal government’s National Survey on Drug Use and Health found that in 2005, the most recent year for which complete figures are available, 85 percent of 20-year-old Americans reported that they had used alcohol. Two out of five said they had binged—that is, consumed five or more drinks at one time—within the previous month. Is it the forbidden nature of drinking illegally that encourages young teens to binge? The promoters of lowering the legal age claim that just as with Prohibition, things would be safer and sounder if we rolled the limit back to 18. But then what do we do with all the 15-year-olds?
Sexually Active Teens Avoid Safe Sex
Teens just don’t like condoms. In the first study ever to examine global trends in teen sexual trends, researchers from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine looked at 268 studies of the sexual behavior of under-25-year-olds from South Africa to Sweden. Their findings revealed how, in all countries, social expectations of how men and women should behave frustrate campaigners' efforts to encourage safer sex. The researchers found that young women often feel their reputation will be sullied if they carry condoms, and young men often feel pressured into having sex when they get the opportunity, whether they have a condom or not. Teens also reported that they found it difficult to even discuss the possibility of sex with potential partners, which makes it difficult to plan condom use, to ask about HIV status, or whether a partner has been exposed to other STDs.
Marie J. 09/13/07
Well, they do it in Europe and have a lot fewer accidents. Kids drink watered wine and not much of that—they don’t drink to get drunk but because it’s something the family does. I don’t know that Americans get that idea of moderation.
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