Legal age for alcohol to be 21?

[Tommy]

Link

I'm all for it.

[¡Punk!]

Will it stop 18. 19 and 20 yr olds drinking? No.

Will it mean we have more neds on the street getting tanked on cider? Yes.

[System_Star]

Good idea, but I don't think it is going to do a huge deal for underage drinking.

There isn't enough health education about it.

[cinamon*spider*]

that's shit i get id'd enough as it is

[Tommy]

I nearly got id'd in Tesco yesterday, nearly. Made my day right enough. Especially as someone thought I was 35 last week.

[¡Punk!]

Weirdly when I was underage TESCO was the easiest place to get a carry out but everytime I buy booze now I keep getting funny looks as tho they're trying to decide if the big bearded guy is over 18

[djtoast]

Load of shite. Shoots wide of the real problems.

If parks are already full of 14 year olds drinking bucky, raising the age limit won't affect them, they're already breaking the law anyway. It may however criminalise huge swathes of 18-21 year olds who want to drink.

Violence on the city centre streets is, from what I see, as prevalent in those over 21 as in those under that age.

And as for health risks to the individual - if it's that bad, it should be banned outright.

Yes there are problems surrounding alcohol - but I can't see this addressing them.

If the police were more proactive about finding out where people had been drinking that they pick up for fighting / breaking stuff etc maybe licenced venues would be more careful about how much alcohol they sell people

[bikuki]

It's the government's idea of a 'quick fix' and it's not going to work. They need to completely revamp education and social stigmas about alcohol if they're ever going to really tackle the drinking culture here.

I may not be completely correct, but from my experience I have never seen any medical problem stemmed from underage drinking that could be prevented by raising the legal drinking age. Every single person I have seen with alcohol related disease (liver, pancreas etc) has been well into adulthood before they began to drink heavily, and it had nothing to do with the legality of it. And any teenagers I have seen who have been drunk (which has been very few) would have gotten the injuries they had anyway, as they were little aggresive shits regardless.

Yes, reading about 12 year olds getting pished is shocking, but it's completely missing the actual issue - alcohol excess NO MATTER WHAT AGE is what is making Scotland such an unhealthy place.

[Mwezzi]

That'd send my social life to the pits. If the legal drinking age becomes 21, then so will most bar/club entry. I see my friends the most on these nights out because it's one thing we all share in common and we're most of us free during the night. So that's me getting further affected by a law regarding a substance I don't use.

Raising alcohol prices didn't work (because the alcohol that young people are killing themselves with remained cheap) and in other countries that DON'T have drink problems, the drinking age is often lower or the alcohol is cheaper, or both - indicating that maybe, just maybe, these aren't huge factors in the problem. I.D.-ing is applied to people who look under 21 anyway but that doesn't stop swathes of 12-year-olds getting drunk on the streets. The real problem lies with attitudes towards the substance, and as alcohol is already demonised, seen as a vice or a guilty pleasure or something rebellious, further restricting it isn't actually going to change anything.* Hell, half my friends took up smoking AFTER the ban and raising the legal age to buy them changed nothing for the younger ones - what on earth makes the government think that raising the drinking age will change anything?


*(Interestingly, cultures which have this 'vice' attitude seem to have more drinking problems than those which don't.)

[Pantgirl]

I dont thnk so, maybe it will go the way of the states IE people under 21 can go to clubs/pubs but get their hand stamped/wear a bracelet etc.

I think its a good idea maybe, depends how it is implemented

I still get id'd all the time, I think it's coz I'm buying Cherry Lambrini I got refused last time I went to buy it as they "Only acepted Passports" so my Driving License was useless. Gutter

[System_Star]

Originally Posted by bikuki

It's the government's idea of a 'quick fix' and it's not going to work. They need to completely revamp education and social stigmas about alcohol if they're ever going to really tackle the drinking culture here.

I know. Scottish health education does not have the impact (or probably the money) it should have to actually make a difference. And on top of engrained social ideas with our drinking culture, raising the age really isn't going to do much. Other than look like the Goverment are trying.

[Semprini]

It won't stop underage drinking in and of itself, just raise the ages of those that are able to pass as legal.

[bikuki]

The only thing I think this would have an effect on is student drinking- wee neds are going to get their booze regardless. I was in A&E in the Western over Fresher's Week, and there were a few attendances that probably wouldn't have happened had the drinking age been higher.
However I am talking about maybe 2 or 3 18 year olds who had gone a bit overboard in the unions and had been brought in, only to be sobered up and sent home without a scratch on them, compared with a stream of aggressive 20-something year old neds who'd been glassed and stabbed 'ootside the pub'.

Looking at that, what do you see is the main problem...?

[Tommy]

I'm not for it to discourage underage drinking. I want less folk in the pub. Although to be fair there arn't many young folk in my pub.

[LesMTS]

The government would do well to employ an individual with even a slight grasp of the underage drinking culture, because their naivete is startling. The preposterous idea that raising the cost of alcopops specifically would impact in any way on underage street drinking was a hilarious expose of how poor their understanding is.
Raising the age limit won't work. It's a stupid idea.
Enforcing current selling and buying-for laws with more muscle and tackling the social issues at the root of the problem are the only things that will make a dent.