Prohibiting Underage Drinking in the U.S.

Paper Summary:

America has one of the worst alcoholism problems in the world. This paper asks what America is doing differently compared to other Western countries and why alcohol is such a large problem here. The paper argues that it seems that the best answer to the problems caused by underage drinking is to end youth prohibition and replace it with intensive alcohol-responsibility training, zero-tolerance drunk driving laws and putting more social pressure on parents and establishments to monitor the drinking of the young. The paper shows that by reducing situations conducive to binge drinking, secretive drinking and drunk driving and replacing them with socially controlled situations, we reduce both health risks and drunk driving risks. The paper suggests that all arbitrary age-restrictions be revoked in favor of better societal monitoring and more pervasive anti-drunk driving regulations, aimed at risky behavior rather than specific targeted groups.
The paper includes a detailed outline.

From the Paper:

"Another important benefit of a change in the laws would be that less law enforcement money spent on prohibition means more money and time spent on serious problems like drunk driving and crime. By decriminalizing under-age drinking -- by removing the age limits which define it as underage -- then one ends the problem of illegal drinking. Of course, there's a certain degree of Orwellian double-speak at work here. If one were to nationalize personal property, that would also strictly solve the problem of theft as well. Obviously removing underage status makes underage drinking an impossibility and therefore not a problem. The real question is whether or not this move would decrease problems. It does seem reasonable, though, that more focus on enforcing drunk driving and erratic driving rules would be far more successful than wasting societal time checking IDs."

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