A number of college and university presidents and chancellors want to rethink the drinking age. According to a statement released by The Amethyst Initiative, they believe the 21 year-old drinking age is not working and, like prohibition, may be counterproductive.
A culture of dangerous, clandestine “binge-drinking”—often conducted off-campus—has developed.
Alcohol education that mandates abstinence as the only legal option has not resulted in significant constructive behavioral change among our students.
Adults under 21 are deemed capable of voting, signing contracts, serving on juries and enlisting in the military, but are told they are not mature enough to have a beer.
By choosing to use fake IDs, students make ethical compromises that erode respect for the law.
They hope to initiate a public discussion and reconsideration of the 21 drinking age by public officials. I wish them luck. The Plain Dealer reports on the initiative here.
Related Posts (on one page):
- Lose Two, Gain Fifteen:
- Rethinking the Drinking Age:
If laws could be devised that offered a choice to those under 21 of either a drinking license or a driving license, but not both, then there wouldn't be this problem.
But how do you do that? Will college students voluntarily turn in their drivers licenses in order to obtain a drinking license? Will universities set up a temporary holding box for drivers licenses while students choose to drink? How long a period must there be between drinking and reclaiming a drivers license?
It could be done, given interest and money, but it's both easier and cheaper to simply ban those under 21 from drinking under any circumstance.
The UK permits certain drinking to those aged 16 and above. This works out pretty well because there are next to no drivers under the age of 21. Only 40% of Brits have drivers licenses due to the extremely high cost of obtaining one (upwards of $2,000 for required classes; drivers ed is not part of the British curriculum). Granted, the UK has a better developed system of public transportation. This makes driving less important for most young people.
This isn't the case in the US, however, where getting the drivers license holds all sorts of symbolic meaning and where driving is a necessity for many young people.
Find a way to separate the drinking and the driving, and you can start coming up with winning arguments about how <21s have the 'right' to drink.
Eh? A third of 17-20 year olds hold licenses in the UK.
Teenagers identify two statuses of adulthood, drinking and driving, and put them together.
Let them drink as toddlers on up (with parental approval) and let them learn to drink responsably.
Meanwhile, drive drunk (or drive while texting) and take away the license with no work exceptions.
Canada has sane drinking laws. The minimum age is either 18 or 19. Underage drinking under adult supervision is permitted either at home or at a licensed premise.
A compromise involving a tiered system, supervised drinking with adults from 13-17 (including a mandatory High School class about the history and chemistry and biology of beer, liquor and wine, including tastings), a revocable permit to drink from 18-19, and full rights to drink anywhere at 20 makes sense to me as well.
All of the statistics cited by MADD suggest that this prohibition against a certain set of adults is not working. It seems as if we are unwilling to learn the lessons of Prohibition: these types of laws, instead of reducing or eliminating drinking, lead to more dangerous and irresponsible drinking and introduce a host of far-worse problems.
If these laws are really intended to address drinking and driving then we should go back to prohibition.
MADD has devolved into a shrill neo-prohibitionist organization.
People thought the way to solve the problem was to raise the drinking age to 21. I alwys thought this was ass-backwards and advocated lowering the drinkling age to 12. That way, kids would have four years to learn to hold their liquor before getting behind the wheel.
With respect to college campuses in particular, a ban on underage drinking makes the likelihood of drinking and driving even greater, as students seek out off-campus parties further away. For this very reason, my college chose simply to ignore underage drinking on campus as long as two informal rules were followed: no disturbing off-campus residents, and nobody ending up in the hospital. When those things happened, the campus police would crack down on the residences involved.
The drinking culture on campuses right now is pretty sick. Binge drinking for the sheer sake of the bragging rights has become the norm. A more civilized possibility of having a few drinks with friends without fear of arrest might start to change that culture, where drinkers gather together for an illicit party and then down as much as they can in one session.
Quoted for truth.
The proper way to handle alcohol is to stop making it the "forbidden fruit" or a sign of adulthood. Stop saying, "Only the cool people get alcohol."
Children should be allowed to learn about alcohol just as they have for millenia before, and just as almost everything else: during childhood.
Am I saying that kids should be allowed to get drunk? Not exactly; I am saying that their parents should be allowed to introduce them to alocohol just as they introduce them to walking, riding a bike, or drinking ceffeinated beverages.
Alcohol has been a very normal part of human society since before humans learned to write. There's no reason to freak out about it now.
PS: for the record, I'm basically a t-totaller, myself - no desire to drink, haven't tasted any alcoholic anything that I like (and I've tasted several, in an attempt to find something that doesn't taste aweful).
Just FYI, serving members of the military CAN drink (no age requirement), but only in military establishments (there's no specific exception in the law, so civilians can't serve them... but the military is exempt from all kinds of stuff like that, just in general, so they can).
At least, that was the case 10 years ago; I haven't heard of any changes to that policy, but I haven't been listening, either.
Gimme a break.
Under 21, the possession, ingestion, or purchasing of any alchol is verbotim.
Over 21, they are OK, outside of a motor vehicle.
How about a tiered system.
In the presence of a parent or responsible adult, there is no age limit for ingestion of alcholic beverages.
At 18 beers and wines are OK for purchase and possession and transport with the following caveats.
1) Containers must be closed and sealed until returned to one's domicile.
2) If served at a bar, proof must be provided, that the individual can return home without driving. IE designated driver, prepaid taxi, address within walking distance.
I find turpentine to be the far superior spirit.
Solution: repeal the law?
What a cowardly (and typically liberal) sentiment.
The appropriate response is to stiffen the penalties for underage drinking to something more in line with the penalties for cocaine or other illegal drugs. To respond to the example above, any college student caught drinking while underage, or providing alcohol to an underage person, should immediately lose all forms of government student aid.
It's not about the wisdom of any particular law. It's about respect for the law as a whole. See: illegal immigration. We can talk about changing the law after we make sure the law is being obeyed; anything else is capitulation to criminal scum.
I realize geography and lack of effective public transport in most parts of the country makes duplicating that a nonstarter, but the puritan silliness about alcohol here does, indeed, lead to binge drinking and underage drinking out of sight of responsible people.
As usual with such things, making something illegal doesn't stop it; it pushes it to sketchier and more dangerous circumstances. Which is fine, if one's goal is moralizing. If you're interested in public health consequences, well, not so much.
Cause the war on drugs done worked real well so far.
federal law prohibits federal highway aid to any state with a drinking age of less than 21. since money talks, i dont think its going to happen unless you can change federal law...and a few university presidents arnt going to get that done.
They also got with the city police and sponsored no-knock no-warrant raids on student houses to catch them with evil alcohol.
It worked, it got the president promoted to columbia where he always wanted to be.
They started the problem, they need to fix it, admit they were wrong, and make it right for their victims.
I know there is a lot of binge drinking at colleges and the college administrations must start acting like adults themselves and bring this under control. They need to worry less about curbing speech and more about curbing drinking.
The current laws simply do not work and the main reason is that very few of the people subject to the law think that they are reasonable or legitimate. The other reason is that you are trying a half assed form of prohibition by allowing most of the adult population to buy the product anyways which prevents any meaningful gate keeping and lowers the moral authority of the prohibition. Ratchet up the penalties for drunk driving to an automatically suspended license and some jail time and then lower the drinking age to 18, or even lower.
2. Unenforceable laws lead to police-state tactics. Here in PA, we have undercover agents going around to college campuses, posing as students, infiltrating parties, busting 19-year-olds for drinking beer. I don't think such methods are justifiable. We are not talking about suspected terrorist groups planning to blow up buildings.
3. Driving under the influence is against the law, and rightly so. That's where the enforcement efforts need to be focused. I've read about how raising the age to 21 led to some small (10-15%) reduction in alcohol-related traffic fatalities for 18-20 year old drivers--which means, of course, that the vast preponderance of drinking and driving in that age group continued in defiance of BOTH the 21 law AND laws against DUI. What a futile exercise in empty-headed paternalism. Anyway, raising the drinking age to 30 would decrease the number of alcohol-related traffic fatalities in the 21-30 group, wouldn't it? So, why not? It's the same argument. Hell, if we eliminated automobiles, nobody would die in car accidents would they?
PatHMV: You misread what I wrote. I'm all in favor of having teen drink... if they renounce the privilege to drive. I don't want to add the worry of drunk teenagers plowing into me. I've already got to worry about likkered-up rednecks and blue-haired Cadillac drivers here in Florida.
pbBaptista: "MADD has devolved into a shrill neo-prohibitionist organization." I couldn't agree more.
The goal of MADD, however, is not as crazy as the people now in MADD. Drunk teenage drivers is a real issue. Kids drinking at college, in my book, is not a bid deal except that it now manifests in exceptionally unhealthy behavior like binge drinking.
My son was introduced to alcohol at home, starting probably when he was five or six, with sips of beer or wine. When he lived in the UK and went to boarding school there, he learned further lessons in responsible drinking--the school had its own pub, with sliding limits on purchase/consumption according to age. When he left campus and school regulations, he could drink whatever he could manage to buy, of course, but a pattern of responsible drinking had been established by then. He did not, btw, get his drivers license until he was 20.
It says one in eight license holders are under 25, not the same thing. The stats are here (page 5). Funnily enough, the proportion of 17-20 year olds with licenses was as high as 49% back in 91.
In the United States' cultural setting, drinking is in many cases a "high society" activity, and in many other cases the activity of those who come home from work and, since they could not drive themselves home from the bar if they were to go, decide to have a few beers on the couch in front of the television. I would estimate that these two categories apply mainly to legal drinkers. Then there is drinking on (and off) college campuses around the United States. Students attending university range in age from 17 to 23, on average. Given the number of students of legal drinking age surrounded by the number of students below the legal drinking age, underage students find it incredibly easy to get access to alcoholic beverages.
That is my understanding of drinking in the United States. However, there is a closely linked (and, for some reason, rarely mentioned) issue which, I believe, is far more important in the consideration of alcohol consumption, at any age, than simply how and when and where and why someone is consuming alcohol.
In countries around the world, people usually have access to public transportation to get home, or are within walking distance of their homes, after having a few drinks at the local pub. This is in my opinion the most significant factor regarding drinking alcohol: means of transportation.
In the United States, almost everybody who needs to be anywhere has a motorized vehicle, except in some of the largest cities or the lucky cities with a good public transportation system. If someone goes to a bar, there is a good chance they drove themselves there. This completely alters the dynamic of alcohol consumption in the United States as compared to places like Japan and European countries.
What would really take care of many of the issues involving alcohol in the United States is having more sidewalks, buses, trams, and metro systems. It is easy to think of various scenarios arising from differences in ability to return home after drinking - car vs. bus, motorcycle vs. walking distance.
A third issue is attitude towards consumption of alcohol. Growing up in a country where drinking is regarded as a daily social activity will result in different drinking habits than growing up in a country where one is forbidden access to alcohol except in the most minute quantities until the floodgates are opened at the ripe old age of 21.
I believe that the legal drinking age in the United States should be lowered. However, I do not think that the proper infrastructure exists for responsible drinking to occur on a wide scale (even for legally aged drinkers). I also do not believe that the attitudes surrounding consumption of alcohol in the United States lend themselves to the creation of a populace trained in responsible consumption of alcohol.
The unspoken agenda must be one of college liability. As it is, most of their students are underage, and this sets the colleges up for greater liability if they have policies that could be twisted before a jury to appear permissive of alcohol use. Make them all of age for alcohol and their in loco parentis liability drops potentially.
The cultural acceptance of using alcohol in the manner that seems typical for college kids doesn't come from the prohibition related to acquiring alcohol, and liberalizing access to alcohol is unlikely to reduce acculturated behaviors.
So a 60 year old who never graduated highschool does not get to drink or drive? Just to give you a hint at how unrealistic a proposal that is, in some of the school districts where I live in San Antonio, only 50% of the students actually graduate highschool. Nationally about 30% of the population never gets a regular high school diploma. In Texas for instance only 53% of hispanic males ever graduate high school. So you have just told half the hispanic males population of Texas that they can never legally drink or drive based on something that has no direct correlation on whether they can drink responisbly or drive well.
I hope this was a joke. This is actually the much more "liberal" response. Let's overregulate something and attach massive penalties to an otherwise normal behavior, merely because you don't like it.
Did you actually read the linked statement? The logic seems pretty clear to me.
Whatever the merits of the 21 year old drinking age, its ridiculous to compare a 19 year old who drinks with a rapist. The law is akin to civil speeding laws in terms of people feeling guilty/embarrased if they get caught. Which is why it will always be disobeyed in such large numbers. There obviously has to be some drinking age. But whatever it is, violating it is never going to be seen as some heinous criminal offense. Most people see it as a rite of passage.
If DUI was the real issue, the logical thing would be to allow underclassman to drink on or near campus where they could walk back to the dorm/frat house. Its like back when state A had a drinking age of 19 and state B had one of 21. The result was more people drinking and driving to cross the state line.
To me, the strongest argument for raising the drinking age was that it would make it harder for 15-17 year olds to get alcohol because they wouldn't know anyone old enough to buy. When the age was raised in the early 80s that was one of the pitches - "we're not really going after the 20 year old, we just want to stop 16 year olds" Nowadays, 35 year olds can't buy beer at the Kwick-E Mart if they forget their ID. Its gotten ridiculous.
getting rid of the drinking age would be optimal. If not that, at least lower it to 18 or even 16.
However, there should be exactly ZERO tolerance for teen drinking and driving. And yes, the laws could even be stricter for "provisional drinkers" iow those under 21 who choose to drive after drinking.
Iow, increase freedom, but increase penalty and try to eliminate some of the stupid defense games when it comes to DUI's, and you would have a great tradeoff.
It *is* absurd that you can serve in the military at 18, but you can't drink alcohol.
Also note that in many states, you CAN drink at 14, 15, 16 etc. as long as it is in a private residence, and the alcohol is provided and supervised by your parents.
and fwiw, at least at my college, the college did little to try to enforce the 21 drinking age - on campus or off. and that's a good thing imo. I agree that with the ridiculous "sue everybody" mentality and legal system in this country that they might face civil liability for ignoring teen drinking, but these are college kids. The school (at least the public one) aint there to be the kid's daddy's. Personal responsibility.
Also, despite what some attorneys think, blowing into a portable breathalyzer is not much of a privacy intrusion. Lower the drinking age to 16, but mandate that any driver 19 or under (for instance) must submit to a PBT upon a traffic stop, even for a non-alcohol related offense (like burnt out taillight). This will greatly increase DETECTION of DUI's **and** most importantly, - fear of apprehension which is the greatest deterrent to DUI. And if you don't want to submit to a PBT when driving, then wait until 20 to get your driver's license. Last I checked, driving is not a constitutional right. That's my practical solution. Recognize freedom, including the freedom to drink , but draw the line when drinking and driving are mixed.
It's a recipe for binge drinking. Drinking publicly, in connection with other activities, is a better way to keep people in line.
Professor: Can you tell me why your cheating was wrong?
Student: It's against the rules...
Professor: But why is it against the rules?
Student: (Pause.)
Professor: Did your actions, maybe, hurt anyone?
Student: Um. I hurt myself. Now... [sob story about being caught].
Professor: Hmm. That's true, but what if you hadn't been caught? Would you have hurt anyone then?
Student: (Long pause.) I would still have hurt myself because I wasn't learning what I would have.... [Digression on wonderful opportunity with wonderful professors, &c.]
Professor: OK, but did you hurt anyone other than yourself?
Student: I mainly hurt myself, but I also hurt my family.
Of course, the student's response would have been entirely reasonable (albeit overly honest) if the infraction was drinking--the main focus of the college's discipline.
Treat them like children, and they'll act like children. The students had no respect for the college or its rules, but they did regularly drink themselves into the hospital.
Your position is that the lives saved by the 11% reduction (to cite a figure arrived at in a recent study by a member of the MADD board of directors) in traffic fatalities from the ban justifies the restriction on liberty all the other teenagers who would NOT abuse alcohol. My point is first that the ban clearly does not STOP teen drinking-and-driving, merely reduces it slightly (if we trust the studies at all). My second point is that if we prohibited people from driving at all (whether they are allowed to drink or not) until age 21, we would likely save even more lives, under your logic. Accordingly, you appear willing to allow a certain number of traffic fatalities which would be prevented if we set the minimum driving age at 21, period. What's the difference between those deaths which we must prevent (by banning 18-21 drinking entirely) and those which we must permit (by not banning driving by anybody under 21)?
When I went to college, my mother slipped a bottle of Tanq in my suitcase but I resisted drinking until I turned 21. Sure, I'm a bit of a freak. But my early introduction to alcohol played some role in my not binge drinking (although if anyone wants to grab a few martinis...).
Plus, my parents raised me on expensive, quality alcohol. I can't afford to get drunk all the time.
Increased penalties, however, only create fear of the law’s enforcers. In particular, prohibition of consensual activity increases motivations to defy the law, facilitates the creation of black markets, requires spiraling unreasonable penalties, increases the incentive for legal corruption, and thus spreads disrespect for the law and its enforcers. See: All of recorded history.
Respect and fear are different. Respect is something that must be earned, not something that can be imposed by increased penalties.
The Founding Fathers clearly understood this simple concept. To bad today’s Republicans and Democrats can’t grasp it. Isn’t it interesting that we take high school dropouts, toss them at fast-food jobs, and tell them to be adults. Then we take those who just graduate, send them to trade school or the military, and tell them to be adults. Then we take the best and brightest, send them to college, and treat them like children for four or five more years. It makes my head hurt.
Beer &wine for the under-21 set would be a fair compromise.
The big question has to be asked - why are American teens uniquely reckless/stupid/moronic compared to other countries?
We drive more. Drunk Europeans might fall in front of their commuter train, but are statistically less likely to plow their car into someone else's.
If it weren't for cars, we wouldn't really give a damn about kids and booze.
There is a significant difference between the right to buy alcohol and the other rights that you get upon turning 18 (except buying cigarettes). That difference is that you don't have a problem of 18 year olds giving their votes, contracts or military service to 17 year olds.
A drinking age of 21 creates a buffer between high school students and people who can buy alcohol. If the drinking age were 18 or 19, there is a pretty good chance that there would be a few kids in every high school who are old enough to buy alcohol and they would almost certainly distribute that alcohol to younger kids. By moving the drinking age to 21, you greatly decrease the access of the average high school freshman to people who can buy them alcohol.
Now I don't necessarily agree that high school freshmen need to be protected in this way, but it is a distinction that means that a lower voting age than drinking age is not entirely arbitrary.
note also that many european countries have much stiffer penalties for DUI (sweden comes to mind).
they also generally have less restrictions on search and seizure than we do, and thus DUI is easier to detect and prove.
That said, it seems to me the age really ought to be 16 or even younger. I would think that most of the problems associated with drinking on college campuses stem for the fact that by the time the students reach college, they have not learned to drink responsibly, because no one has been able to teach them. If parents could legally give their 16 year olds a glass of wine, beer, or maybe even a cocktail every now and then, the child would have a couple years to know that alcohol can actually be enjoyed without resorting to the use of funnels, keg stands, or beer pong tables.
If you're really in favor of that approach, why not go for maximum freedom, and maximum penalty?
Decriminalize the dangerous, but not harmful in and of itself, behavior of DUI, and have life imprisonment (or the death penalty) for any crash, whether caused by intoxication, fatigue or lack of skill.
It's unworkable only because law enforcement would bear the burden of proving the cause of crashes, which is a lot harder than gathering evidence of BAC.
On balance it has saved lives as far as DUI but not anywhere near what MADD would have you believe. This has to measured against the costs associated by fostering an irresponsible youth drinking culture, contempt for the law and civil liberties infringements. IMHO, its a bad policy and its not really a close call.
except I never mentioned breathalyzers. I mentioned portable breath tests. Breathalyzers are the (exceptionally accurate) large instruments that are present in police stations. Portable breath tests are the less accurate, but still very accurate instruments used in the field to HELP DEVELOP PROBABLE cause.
Note that if the portable breath test and/or FST's and/or indicia and/or statements are all wrong, then the BREATHALYZER can prove them wrong, and that instrument is incredibly accurate. Far more accurate than lying or mistaken witnesses, or other forms of evidence we rely in in all sorts of cases. If I was innocent of DUI, but arrested, the breathalyzer would be my best friend. It is a tool used to protect the innocent as much as convict the guilty. It has no animus, no bias, etc.
Furthermore, in most states (and it should be the case in all if it isn't already), any arrestee has the RIGHT to additional tests administered for their defense. Heck, if the accuracy of breathalyzers was in question (and I have no questions they are accurate), then TAKE A FRIGGING ALTERNATE blood sample (as is your right in my state) and use that as evidence of your innocence.
Which is of course ridiculous. Because defense attorney lying aside, we all know breathalyzers are incredibly accurate.
there is no crime I am aware of where the innocent have greater protection. Witnesses lie, are mistaken, mistakes are made, etc. but breathalyzers don't lie, and if they did, the alternate blood samples would prove that. yet they don't.
in my entire career, I have never once had a defense attorney recommend to a client that they have their optional blood sample taken after a DUI arrest. never.
and the defense attorneys almost always recommend the client take the breath test, fwiw (that's because they hope to get the test thrown out later on technicality, but don't want to get the 1 yr license revocation if the person refuses the test).
*if* the breathalyzers were inaccurate, then defense attorneys would recommend that their clients get a blood sample taken as well.
your claim is laughable.
deal with it.
So you defend your bald assertion that we should willingly accept government penalty in exchange for increased freedom without making any argument other than pointing out my rhetorical approach?
Personal experience. Not to say that myself and my friends could not get alcohol when we were in high school, but it was rarely hard liquor and rarely even all that much beer. Once I got to college, I didn't have much difficulty getting alcohol because, among other things, my roommate sophomore year (when I was 18-19) was 23. I distinctly remember thinking in high school that it was easier to get pot because drug dealers didn't card.
If you're looking for a compromise, there is a better one than making the age 19 (since there are a significant number of 19 year old high school seniors). Make the drinking age 21 unless you can show a high school diploma. This would pretty much guarantee that you had to be out of the high school environment before you were allowed to buy alcohol, would allow the drinking age to be lowered, and encourage people not to finish high school all at the same time.
In Texas there is no age restirction as long as their parent, guardian or spouse is supervising them. From the TABC:
So if you are a 16 year old who is legally married in Texas you can legally drink all you want if your spouse is over 21 and supervising your drinking.
And restaurants will serve minors alcohol in the presence of their parents, but the waiters I have known who did this told stories of how they had to make sure the parent stayed at the table with the child to keep it all legal.
Interesting logic. But for the stupid law the people breaking it wouldn't be "criminal scum." This is basically an argument against repealing any criminal law, no matter how dumb. That's a little kneejerk, isn't it? What is so wrong with looking at a criminal law on its merits, without the slogans?
Anyway, 18-21 year olds aren't a big enough proportion of voters to do this on their own. A repeal would have to come from other voters deciding that people in that age bracket drinking don't deserve the label "criminal scum." That, or perhaps people looking back at their own youth and thinking "how much of a hypocrite am I to be?"
In college, I could pretty much get any booze I wanted at any time. I'd say that the biggest effect of the age 21 law was what the college presidents state - people made drinking the social event and vast quantities of alcohol were consumed. My experience since college is that drinking tends to be a part of social events (e.g. having a beer while watching a ballgame).
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In my mind, the biggest from alcohol is caused by drinking and driving. My change to the current law is fairly simple:
1) If there is PC for a DUI arrest, blood should be drawn to determine the level of all intoxicants in the person's system. It is then reasonably easy to determine if they are intoxicated on alcohol, illegal drugs, or prescription medication. It should be impossible to convict on DUI without actual proof of the intoxicant content in the person's blood.
2) Any first DUI conviction carries a mandatory multi-month license suspension. Other punishments can be determined based on the other circumstances, but jail time or probation and a fine sound reasonable to me.
3) Anyone under 18 with a DUI conviction gets a suspended license until 18 (or the normal suspension length, whichever is longer) in addition to normal penalties.
4) Any second DUI conviction carries a mandatory jail term, without exception. It also carries a mandatory license suspension after the completion of the jail term.
5) Any third DUI conviction carries a mandatory license revocation. You may not drive legally again. The jail term goes up dramatically.
well, that just goes to show you - case law etc. varies. in WA state, almost every time a suspect asks to speak to a lawyer, and they do, the lawyer advises them to blow.
the only time I personally recall where a lawyer told the person not to blow was in a case where the guy already had a massive license revocation (and was obviously guilty) and thus would gain nothing by blowing except helping to prove his guilt.
Oddly enough, by the way, as a prosecutor I lost more cases with blood tests than I did with breath tests. I lost only one breath test, and that was because the clock on the machine was set to a different time than the officer's watch (it was a major discrepancy, like 15 minutes or so), and the judge decided that something may be malfunctioning. By contrast, I lost several blood tests, usually because of difficulties establishing the chain of custody of the blood, a problem you don't have with the breathalyzer.
Conservatives should support a rollback of the federal regulation on limited government, states rights principles alone.
Even with training, the child is going to find his limit. I figure lots of people have to get drunk once or twice to figure out what happens; I don't understand why some young adults keep doing it repeatedly. If my children don't do their first excessive drinking at home, I'll at least make sure they've got some knowledge to help them.
As a kid I used to wonder why, if the problem was drinking and driving, you needed a driver's license to drink.
When the population acts in this manner it certainly is time to reevaluate the law.
contrarily, in hawaii, defense attorneys didn't advise suspects to blow or not because suspects had no right to speak to an attorney before choosing. hawaii is a very liberal state, but in this respect, it was not. otoh, if the suspect chose NOT to blow, his refusal could not be used against him. in WA, where they DO have the right to consult before choosing, the refusal CAN be used against them.
so,... tradeoff...
WA is a 1 yr revocation for a refusal and the exceptions are not routine. like i said, i've only seen ONE case where a lawyer ever told his client NOT to blow.
otoh, i never once had a case where a lawyer told his client to get an independent blood test as is their right. so, that (to me) is clear evidence that the defense attorneys KNOW the test is accurate. if it wasn't, wouldn't you want your OWN alternative test?
of course.
no crime offers suspects greater protection against false conviction than dui, for this reason, imo. breathalyzer don't lie, and you get a backup if you want (have yet to hear of ANYBODY requesting one).
this does not surprise me. the more hands, especially NON law enforcement (dr's, etc.) that touch it- the more chances to poke a hole.
Which, of course, means that about 95% of all college students are 'criminal scum.' Including your children, naturally.
Happy shooter: "hey ripped the simply wonderful old bar out of the lawyers club and banned all use of student funded fees for drinking events unless they were for gay drinking events."
If you can't blame anyone in particular, always blame the homos.
Cause, you know, they always have more rights than anyone else.....
Because it's fun.
The fact that drinking at 18 was illegal forces young adults to drink as much as they can in as short a period of time as possible, so as to minimize the risk of being caught with a beer in hand. Drinking under 18 is much rarer, not because it is harder to get alcohol, but because kids are living with their parents.
<b>The problem with the current law is that it drives college students into unsafe drinking habits, precisely at the time they are first released from parental supervision.</b>
It failed. A bartender in a college town told me that most of the kids he talked to hadn't voted, nor had their younger counterparts.
I wonder if they were still looking at the world as if Daddy is supposed to make the rules and fix things. Nothing to do with them.
Right now there are two reasons for underage drinking: 1) it's fun and 2) it's rebellious. Kids aren't learning responsibility when they go away to college. Sitting in a room with an RA (neoabolitionist, scold) for an hour has no impact on their behavior.
I'm not a lawyer, but I HAVE looked into the science behind the breathalyzer, and it is, indeed, very accurate... for the majority of people.
But for a small but still very significant number of people, it is NOT accurate. It uses a PROXY measure of BAC, and proxies are not perfect.
assuming that is true...
in every state i have worked, the suspect has the RIGHT to a blood test taken by a medical person that they choose AFTER the state takes their test.
so, assume you are actually innocent and the breathalyzer's "proxy" gets it wrong in your (exceptionally rare, regardless) case.
guess what? you have the right to have somebody draw your blood (no proxy there between BRAC and BAC) and have the sample submitted to a lab of your choice for independent testing.
iow, the innocent is STILL protected. again, I am not aware of any crime where there is this much protection of the innocent. it's not possible, generally because witnesses lie, are mistaken, etc. etc. but if you disagree with the incredibly accurate, completely unbiased breathalyzer result you can get a "take 2" with a blood test.
this is what makes DUI unique.
if you are innocent, it is almost impossible to be falsely convicted. 1) you get the breathalyzer option. and 2) you get a second try with an independent blood test.
no other criminal investigation offers such foolproof protections.
We do allow a refusal to be used as evidence that the suspect believed they would test positive, but in my experience, few judges really put much stock in that. Most of my DWI experience was with misdemeanors, so the judge was the trier-of-fact. So I tell my friends the same thing as most other lawyers in town... if there's ANY chance that you'll blow .08 or more (and if you've had more than 2 beers that evening, or your 2 beers were both in the last hour or so, then there's a significant chance of that), then don't blow. You'll lose your license for 6 months, but the odds of conviction of a crime drop dramatically.
right. i just found it interesting in that in hawaii (a very liberal state i might add), there was NOT a right at all to consult before making the decision. iirc, the rationale was that a breathalyzer was not testimonial, it was not interrogation, thus the 5th didn't apply, etc. in WA state, they absolutely do have that right.
which makes exactly my point. if you are guilty, don't take the breathalyzer. take it if you are innocent, because it will prove you are innocent. but if you are guilty, it will help prove you are guilty.
which implicity (heck, explicitly) acknowledges that it's an accurate, unbiased determinant of guil (guilt being defined as are you >= .08 or not.)