h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I'd say 16 years of age for beer and wine (as is the lagal age in Germany) and 18 for heavier stuff. I reckon that there's some point in it as I found that where the legal age is 18 for all kinds of booze, "kids" start off with the hard stuff which makes its effects much harder to control (e.g. you can drink say a quater liter of vodka fairly fast without feeling the consequences until after, but it is far more difficult to consume the equivalent amount of beer without feeling the consequences right then).
The only problem I see is that my kids won't really care what I think about the right age. They'll most likely start without asking me first...

I agree that kids should legally be allowed to drink beer and wine at 16 and the hard stuff at 18. Here in the US we are forbidden to drink (at all!) until we are 21! Do you think this stops anybody from consuming alcohol before the legal age, hell no! Instead it encourages kids to go out and get drunk (and usually drink more than they should) just because it is illegal and doing what is illegal is usually fun. When they finally reach the drinking age at 21, its just another excuse to get plaster because now they can finally get into all the clubs they've been missing for years. This is not to say that kids in other countries are any better, but I do believe they by the time these kids are 21 most have had more than their fair share of the drink, or at least know how to handle it better cause they've been doing it for longer.

>> Instead it encourages kids to go out and get drunk just because it is illegal and doing what is illegal is usually fun.

I was discussing with some of my friends this exact dilemma, if you replace 'kids' with 'students' and 'drunk' by stoned.

Also, kids go around doing things which are generally a Bad Idea if anyone in authority (or pseudo-authority, like adults) thinks it's a Bad Idea, including ripping up a Daily Sport (30% page three, 30% sex ads, 20% sport, and 20% scandal. Not the most educated of reads.) and placing judicously under car windscreen wipers, telephone booths and noticeboards. (he he )

I've always been puzzled by the defenition of "kids". I still think the word refers to young goats. Perhaps some CHILDREN may have that honour!

However: New Zealand may have some of the most confusing laws relating to children. (Actually we don't use the term here anymore! The Politically Correct term now is "young persons") It's not so much "Where have all the flowers gone....." AS "where have all the children gone". Our children may leave school at 15, obtain a driving licence at 16; go to pubs and drink, appear in an "adult" courts, vote, get credit and be married at 18.

I don't think children should be given any alcohol whatsoever until after the historically traditional "coming of age" of 21.

With reference to the comments from "The Cow". Children have historically "bucked" authority one way or another. It's part of growing up - to test "authority". But to buck authority by doing "BAD THINGS" is simply to question the wisdom of such authority or adults or parents.

I disagree with you completely [but that's one of the reasons why I like h2g2 so much: the possibility of having conversations with people I would never meet IRL]
I think that children should be allowed small amounts of alcohol - supervised - from a very early age
eg watered-down wine for special lunches on Grandpa's birthday, like the French;
shandy - lemonade with gradually increasing amounts of beer in it when the adults are drinking beer.
a sip of spirits with Grandma or Auntie B on New Year's Eve
All this takes place in the family home - not in some bar where they don't know you.
My family went further than this: my grandfather was a whisky blender and rubbed whisky into teething gums in the 1940s and my father shipped wine. So we always had some at family meals in the 1950s.
There should, however, be no pressure on anyone, especially young men, to drink.Being a man has nothing to do with being able to hold a drink.
PS "Kids" is a word I don't use either, but I need another word for children now that they're in their late 20s.

Wandrin', I think you are absolutely right. This is the right and simple way to teach children to get pleasure from drinking and not from getting drunk. In the meantime, they can also gain some experience, and later be able to drink more without actually getting drunk

Of course, I am not saying that ability to drink a lot has anything to do with being a man. Sometimes it just helps...

Amator

I also agree with Wandrin'Star, having been on the receiving end of this philosophy. When I was about 4 or 5 years old, if I woke up in the middle of the night my parents would give me a sip of cider (or whatever it was they were drinking). As I got older I was introduced to wine (watered down) and beer (first as shandy, then on its own). At about 16 I was introduced to spirits and liqueurs. As a result, alcohol has never had any mystique, or sense of being 'grown up', or 'bucking authority'. It's just something that's there, and I drink when I want to and not otherwise. Even if I'm in company I can't be pressurised into drinking alcohol. And I've only ever been drunk once, and that was at home.

If you have a legal drinking age enforced by parents, children will probably think that drinking is a big thing and go and get drunk the first chance they get. What a person does in their own home is up to them, so parents should feel free to introduce their children to alcohol in easy stages. However, I feel that there should be a legal age for drinking in public. I have no wish to see a child knocking back beer or whisky in a pub or restaurant.

And, yet again, I find myself agreeing with you. I think that introducing things in the family home is a part of bring up your kids properly, and a better case for "better the devil you know" would be harder to find. I have drunk alcohol for most of my life. And I too had whiskey rubbed on my gums as a baby.
The question gets more difficult when teenagers start to go around together, and get into secret drinking. Then the children who have been around alcohol all their lives might just join in to be part of the group. We can never ever underestimate peer pressure. How about we ban alcohol? *this is where I have to duck and run, I suppose*

I don´t know... I wasn´t raised by rubbing whiskey on my gums or anything like that. It is just (as I am from Germany) I was legally allwoed to drink beer and wine when I was 16. Of course we started of earlier, beyause one of us looked like he was 16, when we were 15. I do not think this is to early, because now by the age of 24 I can seriously say, I have had my fair share of booze and know my limits pretty well (mostly because I found out the hard way). On the other hand I know a couple of people who deliberately started drinking at the age of 20, because they said 'they did not like alcohol' before... Anyway, allthough it is not a law-enforced thing, the decision had the same effect. I started out on beer and I reckon its the best stuff to learn the ropes. Beer hits you straight away and I had my most brutal drunk moments when drinking beer (and the most hellish hang overs ) But these guys, had a couple of beers and went for vodka and whiskey straight away. Needless to say what happenend, the got so completely tanked that two of them had to go to hospital. And they still have no control whatsoever over it. They just dont realize what alcohol does to you and when to stop..

I think I started rambling, didn´t I?

Better stop...

Chili wants a beer...

I remember getting sips of beers and such when I was very young. I also remember getting my first "very own" cocktail on New Year's Eve one year from my parents (I might have been 8). I still went out drinking with friends before I was legal. I'm not saying that starting young should be a deterrent, or just an encouragement, it has more to do with the attitude and education parents present their children with.

Occasionally we sipped Mom's or Dad's drinks, but nobody ever told us it was bad for us, that it would make us sick if we drank enough. So these things I found out on my own much later. I think I was 16 when I started drinking, and by 21 the novelty had worn off.

And now, even tho I know it's bad, I have given my son a sippa what I'm having occasionally (twice). Fortunately he can't stand the taste. I had to re-make a whole fresh mudslide because he spit his sip back into it. Taught me

With reference to the comments from "The Cow". Children have historically "bucked" authority one way or another. It's part of growing up - to test "authority". But to buck authority by doing "BAD THINGS" is simply to question the wisdom of such authority or adults or parents.
--
When something is considered a 'Bad Thing' it usually is, to a degree. But most things are bad in some respect, whether it be alcohol, bungee jumping (risk of retinal detachment), free-fall parachuting...

Each generation has to redraw the line between good and bad. It's a wide, fuzzy line which waves and warps... but I think that each generation (by the time they're the next generation) are better than the generation that proceeds it. Maybe.

Or maybe I have too much faith in human behaviour.

I have always been of the opinion that to ban alcohol from teenagers until they're 21 is like waving a red flag to a bull as if they're "normal", it could be construed as a challenge.

Making alcohol available in small or diluted quantities to children and allowing them to drink it at meal times with other, older family members is a very good idea. I was allowed this pleasure whilst growing up and found that, as a rule, in my group of friends I was the one who never became ill from alcohol abuse. I never felt that it was anything "special" to drink and my parents didn't seem to mind my drinking in a pub with friends from the age of 16. Strangely enough, I was never once asked to provide evidence of my age until I was 21...

I now have two children and although we seldom have alcohol in the house, when we do celebrate special occasions with a bottle of beer/cider/wine/vodka, the children are always allowed to partake of a small quantity.

Then again, just to counter my argument, my daughter who is now 13 did recently give me some grief when I had a phone call from her school asking me to collect her because she was drunk! Apparently she had decanted some vodka from my bottle that I'd bought over the Christmas & New Year period and taken it to school, mixed in with her orange juice for her lunch box!!! I was so embarrassed; I wished the ground would swallow me up!!! Subsequently, my daughter seems to have learned her lesson and hasn't touched a drop, even when offered a drink...

Despite growing up in the relatively youth-suppressing US of A, I have to say that I've had a drink at least once every year since, well, before I was in school. Sip of beer here, sip of wine there. When I was slightly older, my folks let me have beers every now and then. I eventually outgrew the need for their authority (in my mind) and procured my own alcohol, before I was 21. Now, being legally able to obtain my own, I continue to drink responsibly. I don't drive drunk, I don't drink excessively, and rarely, if ever, do I binge.

Making laws asserting that the 'age of reason' is set in stone is completely inane. People will learn and grow based on their own experiences, and at their own pace. It isn't the government's job to retard or help that growth; it is the parent's.

-jb

Wow! that will open a can of worms! It seams to me that there is only one way to go: responsible teaching from the parents. And, if you look at Gwennie's post (and I'm 100% certain that she's a very responsible parent!) you will see that kids will do as they want anyway, at least if we bring them up responsibly, and use our own judgement we won't have to rely on everyone else to do our job for us.
Because that's the bottom line, surely? Parents are responsible for their offspring until they are responsible for themselves, not teachers, social workers, politicians, the police etc. etc.

Hear,hear, and not just re their drinking habits.
(I hope there's some sort of a statute of limitations,though. I don't think I'm to blame for the 24 year old having taken rather too much brandy at his best mate's wedding last week)

I think this is symbolic of a larger problem: authority not respecting children as people. Authority says 'Thou shalt not drink until you are X years old'. Children stick one or two fingers on each hand up and get completely wasted.
If authority respects them, tells them what happens, and lets it be enjoyable, it's a much better experience. The moral: your kids aren't as dumb as you think. Usually.

I must confess, my parents were all for the 'offer drinks', but I can't stand beers other than Newcastle, and usually stick to Coke, Orange juice and Vodka mixers ()

The trouble with leaving it to the parents to set the age at which their children drink is that not all parents care. Harsh I know, but true.

My parents were really quite liberal when it came to alcohol. Both my brother and myself were allowed to drink at home from quite an early age, about 12 I think. Although my parents laid the ground rules that we could only drink the beer, a weak one, and only when they were at home and offered it to us. If we ever broke those rules, then no more booze for quite a while. We didn't break them. Both my brother and myself grew up to respect alcohol. My parents always kept an eye on us, and if they thought that we'd had enough then they'd stop us for the night. Usually as soon as they could tell that the beer was starting to affect us.
Around the age of 14 they started allowing us to sample spirits aswell. My brother liked them but I didn't, so I stayed with the beer.
As we got older, the beer my parents would buy in got stronger, gradually building us up to cope with the effects.

I've not always drunk sensibly, at times I've binged quite badly. But never before I was 18.

As for my view on the age to allow children to start drinking, well in an ideal world, at home it should be the parents choice, and to an extent it is, and in public I think that if the children are with their parents, then there too it should be the decision of the parents. But we don't live in an ideal world. Not all parents look out for their kids. A prime example is the father who took his son out to celebrate his 18th birthday. They went down to the local pub where the father was well known, and started drinking. The son wanted to impress his dad, and tried to keep up with him by drinking the same amount of whiskey as him. The father was a hardened drinker, and soon the boy started looking the worse for wear. The father still continued to order drinks for him though and pretty soon the son was in a really bad state. So, the bar staff suggested to the dad to take his son home, but the dad had a better idea and they propped the lad on a seat in the corner to sleep it off. A little while later when one of the staff noticed that the lad was turning blue, they phoned for an ambulance. The kid died of alcohol poisoning. A sad tale that shows that we can't leave it to the responsibility of the parents. But what really makes this tale is that the parents took the bar staff to court for manslaughter, claiming that by supplying the alcohol, the staff were responsible for the death of their son. Bizarrely enough, they won the case and the landlord was convicted.
So, we do need to have a legal age limit to fall back on. But it needs to be a clearly defined age limit. Currently in England it's not a straight forward no under 18s to drink. The earliest that a child can drink in a pub while having a meal (classed as hot food on a plate with cutlery) is at the age of four. Yup, 4. And this isn't just for shandy or wine, the parents can be ordering double whiskeys for the kid.

But that's enough rambling from me

In the US we face different problems with the issue. Giving a child alcohol, in a controlled environment, under supervision, in the privacy of your own home can land you a charge of "contributing to the delinquency of a minor" or "child neglect/endangerment". Parents have been convicted and fined or jailed for supervising adolescent alcohol consumption. Not encouraging, not providing, but merely supervising, as in making sure teens under the influence do not drive. Jail time.

Whoa.
The same US where creationism is law.

Don't get me wrong... I don't hate *all* Americans.. just the stupid ones...