Home
Drinking Ages in Other Countries
David Hanson, a professor at NYU, has studied alcohol and the problems associated with it for 30 years and has done plenty of research and claims that out of the many countries in the world, the United States has the highest drinking age. In a Newsday article by David Bonner, lowering the drinking age back to 18 could have a positive effect in the long run. When a person turns 18 in the United States, he/she officially become an adult, can go to war, and legally get married. Many people think that since all these things happen at once, lowering the drinking age would make it worse.
However, this article mentions that in other countries no one is pressured to drink and they don’t usually break the law and do so because they are exposed to alcohol in small amounts at a young age, so they are free to how it whenever they want to and do not have to hide anything about it. Also this shows that if teenagers are allowed to drink from a young age, they get used to it and in a way, tired of it and don’t find it “cool” or interesting so by the time they are 21 they know how to control their drinking patterns. If the drinking age had already been lower from the beginning, we would not have to deal with all of the problems that are occurring. The Eagle Online, American University’s newspaper, mentions how in Europe, children start drinking at a very young age and this allows them to look up to their parents and learn from them. They don’t binge drink but rather have a little bit with their meals, and get used to drinking occasionally and sparingly. In these countries, the statistics for drinking and driving related deaths are less common then in the United States.
David J. Hanson, Ph.D., Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the State University of New York at Potsdam.
Works Cited
Bonner, David. "Change Legal Drinking Age Back to 18." 23 Feb. 2007. 05 Mar. 2007 .
Hanson, David, ed. "Legal Drinking Age." Alcohol Problems and Solutions. 2007. 05 Mar. 2007 .
Kimmel, Jeannette. "Drinking Age Debated." The Eagle Online 05 Mar. 2007. 05 Mar. 2007 http://media.www.theeagleonline.com/media/storage/paper666/news/2004/04/05/News/Drinking.Age.Debated-651239.shtml
