I took a trip to venice with my mother about a year ago. The whole pace was absolutely stunning and they let me drink liquor. Obviously, I enjoyed the trips in many respects, however, I’m finding myself ruminating over that fact. Venice is very well mannered. So is Canada. So are the Bahamas. I can drink in all of those places. So why not in the US?
The United States is one of eleven countries in the world that has a drinking age of 21. Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of benefits to that. When the drinking age was bumped up to 21 in 1984, it decreased alcohol related fatalities. However, it isn’t 1984 now and I think that we can do a little better than that.
I believe that an alternative course of action would be to allow for a drinking license. This would be something available to people between the ages of 18 and 21. It would be an photo identification card, that holds the caveat of being revoked if the owner is involved in any crime related to alcohol. In order to obtain one, someone would first have to take a class and then pass a written exam.
The class could cover alcohol related issues including but not limited to:
- Recognizing symptoms of alcohol poisoning and how to handle them, with emphasis on the fact that a hospital can and will not disclose to the police if the person drinking was doing so illegally.
- Alcohol and consent. Ensuring that everyone who graduates the class knows very well that if someone shouldn’t get behind the wheel of a car they can’t consent.
- How to avoid using alcohol as a coping mechanism and behaviors that can lead to addiction.
While I make no motion to deny that all of this consideration came out of a desire to be able to purchase fireball, the more I think about this critically the more benefits this system seems to have.
If people know that they can’t get in trouble for calling an ambulance if someone who has alcohol poisoning was drinking illegally, they will be less hesitant to call 911. If someone can recognize the symptoms of alcohol poisoning they know when they or someone they are with is passing through the categorization of wild and into the realm of dangerous. Just those two factors could have us see alcohol related deaths go down drastically.
Teaching that playing someone with alcohol to get them to have sex, is, in fact drugging someone in order to commit rape, would help to increase the absolutely pivotal social stigma towards this behavior. This has potential to mean that, eventually, we can change public perception of rape victims who were intoxicated at the time of their attack, switching the blame from being on the victim to being on the perpetrator.
If someone can recognize that their patterns of behavior have the potential to become destructive, they can avoid them. If someone better understands that they may be prone to addiction, they can know that they need to be more careful about their relationship to alcohol before it even really begins. Furthermore, if someone feel that their drinking license is doing them more harm than good, unlike an ID, this can be left at home or with someone else.
The class is in no way mandatory. Firstly, weather because of health reasons, religious beliefs, or just lack of interest, there are many people who choose not to drink. There is no need to subject someone to hours of education that they won’t ever us. If the class is optional, it means that the students are the one’s who are reliable for the tuition. It wouldn’t cost taxpayers anything.
The American relationship with alcohol is uneasy. We romanticize and vilify it at the same time. As a result, most young adults in America don’t know what the hell they are doing. There isn’t any sense in the denial of that, or the fact that most people begin drinking before it is legal for them to do so. Instating this system would help to lower the statistics surrounding some really horrible things. Also, I’d get to have wine with dinner. Everybody wins.
