Underage drinking

I had my oldest son late in the year for tax purposes. He turned 17 in December. This means many of his friends will turn 18 next year which is legal drinking age. This is freaking my wife out.

Of course I had my first beers at 16 and my wife boasts of getting into a disco at age 15. She also for reasons she won't discuss cannot abide the smell or taste of rye. I suspect most adults actually have fond memories of sneaking alcohol before they were legal. In fact it was a little less interesting after you were of age.

So what do teenagers do when they drink? For the most part they get drunk occasionally throw up and wake up with a bad hangover. Occasionally they have sex. With the possible exception of sex this is not necessarily a bad thing; no-one is seriously hurt by this behaviour. Sex is only really bad if you or your partner get pregnant, share a sexually transmitted disease or if your culture demands an intact hymen on wedding night.

Where teenagers get into trouble when they drink is when they drive. That is when they kill or injure themselves or others. We read about these tragedies and blame alcohol instead of the 2 tons of steel travelling at 140 km per hour.

Wait a second....

Teenagers also kill or injure themselves and others when they aren't drinking. They probably do it with greater frequency. The teenager who gets killed driving home from school just doesn't generate the same headlines as the teenager who buys it at 2 am. Face it, teenagers are just plain bad drivers and probably that doesn't change until about 25. The insurance industry clued into this years ago.

So my solution:

Get rid of the drinking age or at least lower it to 16 (the legal age in the Netherlands and also Cuba). I know sneaking into a bar underage is a rite of passage but it is one we can do without. Think of all the energy that goes into enforcing that law. Take that energy and transfer it into teaching responsible drinking and harm reduction.

At the same time....

Raise the legal age for driving to something sensible like 18 or 21. We all know we were lousy drivers before those ages. Plus that way most kids will already have had the experience of being drunk before they learn to drive. That just might make them think twice before getting into a car drunk.