do you think America should lower the drinking and smoking age to 18 ?

Question

at age 18 you can join the military and die for your country, yet you cannot buy beer or cigarrettes, ciggs at age 19 and beer and alcohol til 21, what do you think and why ?

Answer 1

*No !!!! keep the kids away from these vices pls..... for as long as possible !!!!

Answer 2

The "easy" part would be to change the drinking age to 18. The difficult part is changing attitudes toward alcohol in the US. You can drink alcohol without being an alcoholic. Making people wait so long to drink and demonizing alcohol only leads to dangerous binge drinking by people of all ages. Having the drinking age at 21 is not keeping kids from drinking. Anyone who thinks this is protecting children is seriously out of touch.

I agree that maybe the age to enlist should go up to 21, though. The majority of 18 year olds today can barely handle being told "no" by mommy and daddy. Come to think of it, though, maybe the military is just what they need...

Answer 3

No. what they should do is raise the age for voting and joining the miltary to 21. They should all be made to happen at the same age.

Anyway, if you join the military, you can drink and buy ciggs at 18 on the military installations.

Answer 4

The laws just get crazier by the day, and these laws are taking away our freedom of choice. When I was growing up, we could drink legally at 18, and buy smokes at 16. We never had a big problem with abuse of these things because they were legal, and it was no big deal to drink or smoke. As soon as the government made this illegal, then there was a big problem, because it is illegal. I feel the same as you do, that if you can get drafted and go to war, you should have the right to smoke and drink, legally.

Answer 5

I'm in South Louisiana and they can buy cigs at at 18 and beer at 21 over here. I think soldiers should be allowed to drink (I did) Because they are risking their life for us they are entitled to their fun.
But College kids that stay home and get into street races and kill innocent ppl, nope they shouldnt be drinking. They are a bit more wreckless than the older crowd.

Answer 6

I hear this argument a lot, but joining the military and smoking and drinking are entirely different things. 18-year-olds are allowed into the military because they're often at their peak, physically, and they're young enough to be more easily molded into soldiers.

And you can make the age argument about anything, really...if you can die for your country at age 18, why can't you run for President until you're 35, etc....

Answer 7

I think a lot of 21 years olds are still not old enough to drink responsibly. Since I struggled to end a smoking addiction myself, I am not in favor of making it easier for them to get cigarettes.
If we have to change the age limit for something, I'd rather change the age that they can join the military to 21.

Answer 8

No, the drinking age was 18 when I was 18 and that just meant we started drinking in High School.

Hindsight being 20/02, I don't think High School seniors should be spending their evenings in a bar. (Like I did!)

Answer 9

Yeah I do. Either that or raise the minimum age one can join the armed forces to 21. How can you tell a person who just went into combat that they can manage a fire arm and the emotional aspect of war, but not allowed a couple of drinks.

Answer 10

Last time I checked the age for buying cigarettes was 18, not 19.

Answer 11

I don't have a problem with the drinking age being 21. We need to protect our young people for as long as we can. I also think it's ridiculous to send an 18 yr old child to fight a war.