Should the UK legal drinking age be changed?
posted October 25, 2009 - 12:55pm
Recently the British government has announced plans to raise the UK drinking age from 18 to 21. According to Sir Liam Donaldson, the Chief Medical Officer, changes need to be implemented in order to counteract the increase of alcohol related crime and alcohol related hospital admissions. There has been
much debate over the possible legislation and the government must be seen to be acting on the subject.
Many argue that by raising the drinking age there will be an enormous reduction in the number of underage drinkers and incidents involving underage drinking. They believe that the cause of these incidents is the perception in today’s youth that if I only have one year or two until I can drink legally, why not do it now? John Tilwand, the head of the campaign to have the age lifted to 21 said:
“The problem with modern adolescents is that they see the drinking laws as obstacles to be climbed over or tiptoed round. They compete to see who can be the first to complete the challenge. The same is true of the laws regarding the age of sexual consent. Those who engage in either forbidden activity before the rest are championed in front of the others. Those who abide by the laws are taunted and made to feel inadequate. If the drinking laws transformed the age at which one could first drink in public to 21, kids would see the obstacles as too great to overcome and would not try.”
Although it may be true that peer pressure plays a role in encouraging young people to violate the current law, it is minimal. Those who engage in drinking whilst underage do so consciously; it is not their friends who pour the alcohol down their throats. They have committed a crime on their own and it is unclear to why changing the drinking age will make them less likely to disobey. If anything, kids will see it as a greater challenge and sink to new lows to break the law in drinking underage.
Most incidents involving underage drinking have occurred after an excessive amount of alcohol has been consumed. The main issue is not the actual consumption of alcohol by those below the legal age; it is the gargantuan quantities which adolescents are consuming nowadays.
What effect will changing the legal drinking age to 21 have on excessive drinking and the crime that it leads to? The USA suffered heavily from the chaos which alcohol can bring. The US Government experimented with the extreme solution of altogether banning alcohol – prohibition. It was inevitably unsuccessful due to the difficulties enforcing it. Now the USA has a legal drinking age of 21 in most states but it has been ineffective. In fact underage drinking has soared and more hospital admissions occurred in 2008 due to minors drinking than any year ever before. Since American teenagers only have occasional opportunities to drink they try to make up for lost time at parties and any chances they get. This inability to drink safely is one of the consequences of a heightened drinking age and it is very dangerous.
Most of the continental European countries have gone the other way with a low or no drinking age. For example, France has a legal drinking age of 16 however it is rarely enforced. Children in France are brought up to treat wine as just another part of a meal and often have small glasses from 10 upwards. By not putting alcohol on a pedestal and treating it as something special, the French have negated the large number of drunk and disorderly cases that we have in Britain or exist in the USA. Alcohol is a part of their culture and by becoming accustomed to drinking at a young age the chances of abusing it are greatly reduced.
I am confident that changing the UK drinking age would be beneficial however not in the way that is currently planned. If it were removed or at least moved down to 16, there would be a great reduction in alcohol related crime and alcohol related hospital admissions. However any rise by the UK government in the legal drinking age would definitely contribute to increasing numbers of alcohol related health problems – this cannot be allowed to happen!
N.B. - The specifics of this article are fictional e.g. quotes, quoters and stats
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