Drinking age 20?
Let’s be honest, if politicians raise the drinking age to 20 does anyone here think that 18 and 19 year olds will stop drinking?
MPs to vote on raising drinking age
A bill raising the drinking age back to 20 has been given the go ahead by a committee of MPs, and the issue will now be decided by a conscience vote in Parliament.
The cross-party law and order select committee released its report on the Sale of Liquor (Youth Alcohol Harm Reduction) Amendment Bill today and recommended that it proceed with only minor changes.
Parliament voted by a narrow majority in 1999 to lower the drinking age from 20 to 18.
posted by Bomber @ 12:00 pm
18 comments
18 Comments:
Nah, but 14 and 15 year olds might find it harder to get away with.
If they are going to change it they should make it 19 like it is in BC Canada. That seems to work.
yeah i agree with anonymous 1. it's kinda all about access isn't it? i think it's a bit easier to tell the difference between a 20 year old and 17 year old, than a 18 year old and 16 year old.
i think also it's about how much clout a message can have when we as a nation take the responsibility of drinking more seriously. we can speak with more force into education programmes when we make a statement about how irresponsible drinking causes so much damage.
but, as with many things, it's much more about modelling the change in attitude as it is about legislating it.
i'm for the change, but i don't think it will make a huge difference in the next 5 years. give it some time.
There's no good reason, really, to have the drinking age at 18. Unless you're an 18 year old.
I do kind of think that it should be 20/ish for bottle stores and unregulated premises and 18 for bars and so on. There's infrastructure in place that stops people drinking too much at bars etc that there isn't with other means of getting the booze.
It'll mean that 18/19 year olds aren't bored out of their skulls and have _some_ access to entertainment and autonomy etc.
im 17 and drink alot. thes stupid young cunts (well younger than me) drink alot too. every year i could see people starting earlier. a few years ago when i started drinking, the "age" for everyone to start was 15. before i left, i could see people as young as 12 getting wasted. fuck that, but whats a piece of legislation gonna do to change this "drinking culture?"
PS i dunno how things are now cuz ive been out of the country for a year (currently living in japan, where i usually just go to the pub, have a few drinks and enjoy the people!)
im 17 aswell, and i am horsed at least once a week. age restriction actually doesn't stop anybody. it just makes it that LIL bit harder to find someone to buy. still no worries there. i been drinking for a while and i can withstand a fair bit compared to my older friends.
i started slow on a few and over time i can handle alot more, the problem is how much we drink and ESPECIALLY those mixers. if you cant handle the taste of alcohol or dont like it then you shouldn't be given the choice of 5% mixers that taste like fanta.
pushing the age with just further the number of under age drinkers duh.
Its not about alcohol its about ignorant NZ morons.
In Europe children are brought up drinking watered down wine with meals from a very young age - 6 or 7 maybe younger.
These people are cultured, their countries do not have problems with binge drinking or public drunkenness.
Dude, it was 7 years ago, if any legislation is made and it actually gets through, it will be closer to 8 or even 9 years ago.
That's a pretty long time.
Boo fucking hoo, some signs have to be changed. Don't think bars actually pay for it anyway, the government authority tends to give out the standardised "we don't serve minors/people who are drunk/etc".
Je-zuz.
I like to drink alcohols and smoke a cigarettes. Why not? It is nice.
Your signage is tax deductible.
That should not worry you if you are turning a profit.
If you are not turning a profit, then you are not a good businessman.
What a sad bunch of comments on such a serious social issue! No one here has even stopped to consider the impact of alcohol mixed with party drugs or "P" on violent crime committed by juvenile offenders (under 21). There's also the "Boy Racer" impact on drink driving and fatal accidents. Has anyone commented on that? Not!
Raising the age for buying alcohol may not completely stop the problems that juvenile drinking cause, but it WILL make access more difficult. If the penalties for drunkeness and possession by minors are made more severe that may have an effect as well.
If you look at the road toll casualty's, a very large percentage of the death's are either teenage driver's, or young passenger's in car's where alcohol is the contributing factor in an accident. The other issue with drink driving by teenage drivers is the innocent family lives that are ruined when they slam into somebody else during their night on the piss.
The age should definitely change, but the attitudes of tolerance and the cultures surrounding it should change as well.
This issue is a lot like the smoking issue. Kid's think it's glamorous to drink - (read Rangi's comment above and read betweeen the lines). I'm 55 and used to smoke cigarettes, and I still enjoy beer, but in a more sensible non - binge amount. My liver is totally screwed up from the effects of long term alcohol usage - not from binge drinking, just long term Friday & Saturday night beers with mates, and social gatherings.
Of course that really doesn't mean shit to anyone who still believe they're invulnerable and indestructible as you do when you are 18 - 20yrs. old. I guess it takes losing a life of a best friend or relative to wake you up to the fact that abuse is abuse. Car's and drugs combined with alcohol make it even worse.
Raise the age to 21, give jail sentences for supplying to minor's, and slap a huge community service sentence and direct compensation to victims of underage drinker's who's irresponsibility causes an accident or injuries - I say!
Raising the minimum age will change very little. Its incredibly easy to get alcohol if you are under age.
Rather than change the age take some steps that will work:
* Stop serving alcohol to drunks in bars
* Stop selling alcohol to minors
* Decent alcohol education in school
those 3 steps will make a big difference.
i do agree that young people are driwould say i am as well (as a 22 year old). Now i dnt wana sound like a "hows about a dance with ur dear old dad - its not the drinking its how we drinking" kinda bloke here, but lets look at the issue. Kiwis are a bunch of piss heads, same with our trans tasman brothers australia.. we all have a common favorate passtime which involves sitting round drinking urself absolutly stupid for a weekend then head home for the week to plan the next one.
I think the real issue is in fact the world we (as a nation) have created - a world in which drinking heaps of booze is basically apart of our culture!. After reading about this issue and some of ur following comments i myself am sitting here thinking my god how sad are we... how creatively bankrupt must we be as a people when this is what we are! who we are! what we are proud of... been a bunch of piss heads. haha drinking grog is a great passtime dont get me wrong (i do it all too often), however the way in which it consumes a lot of our lives and even *shock horror* becomes something of an obsession in this country is pathetic. should the drinking age be put back up to 20? i dont believe it should be. I mean we ask our youth to grow up n give them a lot of repsonsibility and expectations from a very young age (and yes we cant forget that we also ask them to go to war if it be necessary n die for us all) I feel it would be hypocritical and irresponsible of us as adults to stop them from having a beer when they feel like one.
HOWEVER i feel that the real issue here is society as a whole! why is it that we (thats you and me) drink so much? why is it that young people follow their mums dads older bros n sisters and drink so irresponsibly? and what is it about a society that the path to feeling fucking fantastic, opening our minds (and speaking them), interacting with ppl in genral (esp the opposite sex) and all out happiness (until the hang over kicks in) is thru the neck of a jim beam bottle? MAYBE our friends in the bee hive should be asking those kinda questions? or maybe just maybe the r afraid of the answers? ahh well thats what i think anyways,
drink and be merry folks
yours,
Ruz
If Parliament votes to return to a drinking age of 20, will we have a procession of politicians coming on TV apologising for getting it wrong 7 years ago? My guess is...not.
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The voice of my generation...
i don't agree , drinking is already a conflict in the U.S.A and by lowering the drinking age it will make it worse
I thing the drinking age needs to be lower, about 13 or 14. The reason for this is as follows. Teenagers are not allowed to drink but they so desire it. It is a big part of being social in high school. But since they are not allowed to drink they want to go out and get hammered, obliterated. Then they are scared to tell their parents so they just get in cars with people who have been drinking thinking "Oh they havn't had that much itll be fine. If we can start the population drinking early then they will not want to get wasted because it is not the same as doing it "Illegaly." I have a foreign exchange student from denmark in my school, we talked and he said,"We do not get so drunk because we have been doing it since we were young. So they are not going to get hammered and they will be confident in calling an adult to pick them up.
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