NOTE: POSTER IS A "DRY" and not for religious reasons. Not for "driving safety" reasons either. Poster is a "DRY" because EtOH.......Alcohol....Liquor....BOOZE......KILLS MORE PEOPLE and injures more people than tobacco or sloppy Doctors. It is also hypocrisy to "war on drugs" while allowing the sale of Booze or Tobacco. ASK ANY SURVIVOR OF BREAST CANCER, Liver or other diseases.

American justice

Free Jenna!
Jun 7th 2001
From The Economist print edition

A Joan of Arc, burning on the pyre of American puritanism

http://www.economist.com/opinion/displayStory.cfm?Story_ID=653073&CFID=2507228&CFTOKEN=54910365

FORGET about the Senate or Californian black-outs. This summer, there is only one story in America: the attempt by two 19-year-old girls, the president’s daughters as it happens, to buy drinks in a Mexican restaurant in Austin, Texas. This was Jenna Bush’s second alcohol-related offence in just over a month in a state that imposes mandatory prison sentences for a third offence. She compounded her crime by using a fake ID to try to buy her margarita—and by encouraging her goody-two-shoes twin sister, Barbara, to join her in flouting the law.

“Margaritagate” has launched a national debate about everything from journalistic ethics to teenage stress syndrome. Some of the ghastly “doctors” who take over TV screens at moments like these have even blamed George Bush (he gave up drinking through cold turkey, rather than encouraging his entire family to “work through” his drinking problems with him). But there has been no national debate on the one subject that is crying out for reconsideration: America’s absurd insistence that people cannot drink until the age of 21. Most other countries allow people to buy alcohol at the age of 18. Americans can marry, breed, abort their unborn children, pay taxes, appear in pornographic films, fight for their country and even vote at that age. But buy a margarita with your Mexican mush, and you could end up in the slammer.

The original faggot-tosser on Jenna’s pyre is easy to identify: Elizabeth Dole. As transport secretary in the early 1980s, Mrs Dole hit on the idea of linking federal highway grants to raising the legal drinking age to 21. Sadly, even states that are supposed to take freedom particularly seriously, such as New Hampshire (motto: “Live free or die”) decided to take the cash. But Jenna is not just the victim of the bossiness of a transport secretary (and failed presidential candidate). She is also swimming against two currents in American life: petty puritanism and a pathological obsession with safety.

America rightly thinks of itself as a country conceived in liberty. But it is also a country that was conceived by puritans. Again and again, these days, puritanism seems to be trumping freedom. No country treats smokers (or indeed tobacco companies) with such petty vindictiveness as the United States. As for safety, America seems to have convinced itself that the world is an astonishingly dangerous place, and that the only way to keep these dangers at bay is to regulate even the most trivial bits of behaviour. Hence the need to replace standard playground equipment with “safer” alternatives, such as one-person see-saws and transparent tubes to crawl through. And where else would photocopier toner come in packets that warn you not to eat the contents?

Of course, defenders of the current drinking laws argue that they have saved thousands of lives. But if raising the drinking age to 21 makes the roads so much safer, why not raise the age to 31? Or 51? Or ban alcohol altogether? After all, it worked so well in the 1920s. Certainly, drunk-drivers should be penalised severely. But there is no sillier use of the police’s time than trying to criminalise a substance that has lubricated student life since universities were invented. And there is no simpler way of advancing liberty in America than to bring its drinking (and smoking) laws into line with common sense.

Let Jenna Bush party on. And let America rise up in revolt against all the petty princelings of puritanism, before every aspect of social life is criminalised, pathologised, regulated or legislated out of existence.

 

 

 

-- Anonymous, June 12, 2001

Answers

Well, I actually have to agree with this. I have always found the drinking age of 21 to be ridiculas. At 16 you can take a 2 ton death machine out on the road. At 18 you can die for your country and do just about anything else you want, but lord forbid you have a beer.

Do I think the drinking age should be lowered? Yes! Does this change the fect that Jenna broke the CURRENT law? No! Sorry folks, but as long as the law is on the books, she is getting what she deserves. Like I said though, I do think the age should be lowered, but it hasn't happened yet.

-- Anonymous, June 13, 2001

Actually the legal drinking agewas lowered to 18 in most locales for several years during the 1970s. The 21 age was re-instated due to a significant increase in teenage drunk driving accidents.

It's an old argument.

-- Anonymous, June 13, 2001

"let America rise up in revolt against all the petty princelings of puritanism"

Revolt against the Republicans? Sedition!

This article correctly fingers Elizabeth Dole (R). It forgot to finger George W. Bush (R), currently POTUS, who signed the Texas law that required the restaurant to call the police for a case of a 19 year old attempting to drink a Magerita. Those are his tooth marks on Jenna, along with those of a bunch of other Republican "princelings of puritanism".

Some Democrats merit the charge, but let us give credit where credit is due. Since the R's started courting the Religious Right, they have been the party more tightly wrapped in puritanical moralism.

-- Anonymous, June 13, 2001

I lived in Texas when I turned 21. Two weeks before my birthday the cops came into the club I was at and I headed for the batheroom with the rest of the girls. They left, we came out. They came back with female cops and I stayed at my table and grinned as they raided the ladies room and dragged all of the underagers out.

Two weeks after I turned 21, they changed the drinking age to 18 for beer and wine. The clubs were flooded with puking 16 and 17 year olds, not to mention 18,19 and 20 year olds. There is a fact about puberty and the physiological and psychological changes that take place. The end of puberty, around 20-23 brings a leveling out of hormones and emotional and psychological maturity. Teenagers in the throughs of puberty do not have the common sense to drink responsibly.

Personally, I believe it is up to the parents to teach responsible drinking habits to kids. It is my understanding that parents have the right to allow their children to drink, in their custody. When my daughter was 14 she went next door to a party at the house full of college kids. She is almost always honest with me so she told me about it. I had already talked to her about drinking and told her I would let her drink at home, withion reason, if she would not do it away from home. Fortunatly, it has worked out, at 20 she doesn't drink very often, and when she does, she does it at home and not to excess. She had a few lessons in over doing it *grin* . The morning she dragged her sorry self out of bed, allbleary eyed and sick to her stomach, I had to laugh at her (as my parents had me). She didn't like it at all and makes sure she doesn't get to that point again. One year and she will be old enough to drink legally out side of the home, and I honestly believe she will be prepared to drink publicly with few, if any problems.

The fact is that it is illegal for her to drink outside of her home and she would have to pay the consequences, as should Jenna Bush.

-- Anonymous, June 13, 2001

If its OK to have consensual sex with a 14-year-old in Hawaii then you should be able to get tanked-up at age 18...

-- Anonymous, June 24, 2001

http://the.honoluluadvertiser.com/article/2001/Jun/22/ln/ln01a.html

-- Anonymous, June 24, 2001

The laws actually have it reversed. Drinking should be allowed at 16. Driving licenses shouldn't be given out until 21.

-- Anonymous, June 29, 2001

Ich darf saufen! Bis ich bewusstlos bin! ;-)

-- Anonymous, December 05, 2001

Ich bin schwul und das ist gut so!!!

Love and Peace

Ben

-- Anonymous, December 05, 2001

YO YO YO, get into the flow and keep it low

-- Anonymous, December 05, 2001

Hi Maria,I think you have been drunken when you wrote your answer!!! You should never get a drivers license and no alcohol,too!!!

-- Anonymous, December 05, 2001

benny ist doof

-- Anonymous, December 05, 2001

HA HA!Would you seriously like to wait for your driving license until you`re 21. Just be happy to be able to get it when you're 16!!Of course alcohol should be everybody's own business but isn`t it in most cases anyways?

-- Anonymous, December 05, 2001

We read the article in school, and as we live in Germany, we are allowed to drink alcohol legally with 16 (mainly soft-drinks). The reasons for raising the legal drinking age are understandable, but in modern times you should think through this decision again: only because a former transport secretary had the great idea of blackmailing the federal states today`s American teenagers have to wait 'till 21 to drink alcohol while they can do anything else much earlier.

-- Anonymous, December 05, 2001