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Comment by epi0Bauqu | Hacker News Reader

Why do you think the drinking age makes 21 year olds behave like 16 or 18 year olds?

People who first start drinking once they're are legally allowed to start doing so excessively. That's always the case, no matter if you are 16, 18 or 21. Being from Germany, where the drinking age is 16, I was stunned to see those 18 year old "kids" in the UK behave in a way that reminded me of myself when I was 16. I suspect this is similar for 21-year olds in the states.

> I suspect this is similar for 21-year olds in the states.

I certainly don't want to call my fellow Americans particularly mature, but it's pretty rare for people to wait until 21 to drink here, so I think the effect is dispersed.

Sure, but I don't think the 18-year olds in the UK don't start drinking before, either. I think whenever it's actually legal, you abuse your right to drink by doing so excessively. I might be wrong, though.

I think you're right. In the UK I would guess that the average teenager these days starts drinking with some regularity from the age of 15. Incidentally you can only begin driving at 17. I think this ordering works better as most of your irresponsible drinking is done without any option of driving.

For a long time at Rice University they, in not so certain terms, allowed underage students to drink in private parties on campus. While going there many of us thought this helped prevent drunk driving. Hearing about friends getting DWIs was very unusual, and generally limited to off campus students trying to drive themselves home when they shouldn't.

More recently, they've started to crack down on underage drinking, and now the police blotter fills a column in the campus newspaper with a series of "Driver arrested on suspicion of DWI." Hopefully this is a result of them cracking down on drinking and driving too, but I fear that to some extent it's because they are forcing the parties off campus.

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