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+--- Thread: College binge drinking on the rise (/thread-2951.html)
- anna - 03-15-2000
Despite efforts to demonize alcohol on campuses over the past 10 years, Harvard researchers have found that binge drinking has gone up, even though the number of people abstaining from alcohol entirely has also gone up. I'm not surprised at this polarization -- it goes well with Americans' all-or-nothing mentality (we seem to do the same thing with diets/eating). The research also said that lowering the drinking age is not the answer.
Just wanted to get people's comments and views on this. Personally, I don't think it's just a matter of lowering the drinking age -- I think it's a cultural issue as well. I personally would love to see the drinking age lowered to 16 and the driving age raised to 21.
Any thoughts out there?
Anna
- mrdutton - 03-15-2000
If we were really responsible for our own actions................... (Now there is a "pipe-dream.")
Then, I would advocate no particular age limit. Parents would be responsbile for making sure their children were properly introduced to the good and bad points of consuming alcohol.
I have never understood why, as an adult and as a reasonable and responsible parent, I could not have a glass of wine served to my child in a public place. Nor can I understand why some states would make it illegal for me to serve such beverages to my children in the privacy of my home.
- Innkeeper - 03-16-2000
Here in Maine an interesting law is making it's way into law. It would say that kids can still get their licences at 16, but not carry any passengers until they're 18. Other than that we're not doing much smartly. We think the drinking age should be lower to 18, and that it should be lawful for parents to serve wine to their childen at home at any age.
- Thomas - 03-16-2000
As for drinking age: in Italy there is no drinking age, and that is the civilized answer.
On the so-called binge drinking issue: I get crazy when language is abused to advance a cause.
It used to be that the word binge applied to alcoholics who went through long drinking spells--days, complete with black-outs--often in-between long spells of no drinking.
Our anti-alcohol culture has taken a loaded word like binge and applied it to college heavy drinking and partying which, incidentally, has been the domain of foolish young people since alcohol was put into the class of "forbidden fruit," the thing towards which every young person gravitates.
Whenever I write about college drinking I refrain from using the phrase "binge drinking" 'cause that isn't what it is, unless the kid is already an alcoholic.
- anna - 03-16-2000
Good point, Foodie, regarding the misuse of the word "binge". The definition that's commonly being used now is 4 or 5 drinks in one "sitting". To me, that makes no sense -- if I'm hanging out with friends for a whole evening, 4 glasses of wine over appetizers and dinner is certainly not excessive, yet I would be labelled a binge drinker(!), right alongside idiots who do 4 shots in 4 minutes. The word "sitting" is never defined by any of the anti-alcohol advocates, yet everyone is supposed to know how long a time period that is.
And mrdutton -- I'm sure the anti-alcohol fanatics would take issue with your statements and say that any parent who serves alcohol to someone under 21 (horrors!) is de facto "irresponsible". Unreal, isn't it?
[This message has been edited by anna (edited 03-16-2000).]
- mrdutton - 03-16-2000
Our youngsters certainly are not binge drinking.
Quite frankly I think some organizations are overstepping their bounds. MADD is no longer Mothers Against Drunk Drivers, it is now Mothers against drinking. And don't read me incorrectly, no one should drink and drive. It is just too dangerous and foolish.
My parents taught me about alcohol and about being responsible over its consequences. I was allowed to drink in our home from about the age of 14. That means an occasional glass of wine at a "special occasion" dinner and a beer or two in the summer when we had a family cook-out or a clam bake on the beach (Yeah, I am old enough to remember when it was okay to have fires on the beach and actually cook clams and lobsters and veggies and such in the fire pit made from rocks and seaweed.)
However, that education did not prevent me from going out on a number of occasions with my friends and getting plastered. But isn't that part of the learning experience? I think it was. As a youngster, I had the attitude: If it doesn't hurt me why shouldn't I try it?. Well that has since been tempered by experience.
I tried to do the same for my daughter. Today she does not drink at all. That decision is based on some life-time experiences and a very large hospital bill. But has nothing to do with me trying very hard to teach her to drink responsibly. (Just as I refused to learn that lesson from my parents; she had to find out for herself.) She went out one night, as a young adult, with her "friends" and drank too much. She survived the alcohol poisoning, the stomach pump and came to the realization that she needed to face up to her own actions. My wife wanted us to pay the hospital bills. I refused; my wife and my daughter later thanked me for refusing.
The problem today is not so much with young people trying things out for themselves as much as it is with population density. When I was young and got plastered and drove home from the school dance with one eye shut, there were maybe a half dozen cars on the road and we were all heading in opposite directions. Back then, if I hit anything it would be a neighbor's mailbox or trashcan along the side of the road, which I would replace or repair the next day or face the wrath of Dad (which in those days was worse than the the wrath of God). In my day, if I was two-sheets-to-the-wind, I'd pull over and sleep it off in the car. Wake up at 0500 with the roosters and plod back home with some lame-brain excuse about where I was.
Well we can't do that today - but our children haven't changed that much and they still need their space. But that space is just not as large as it used to be. I think that is where some of the problem lies and where the anxiety comes from. I could go out and stand alone and scream my head off in teen angst-frustration, but how many of our children can do that today? Because today we have to be so very politically correct amongst other things.
I sure don't have the answers, but I think I have a bit of a grasp on the problems.