My talk is about lowering the drinking age of alcohol…

This increase in abusive drinking behaviour is due to "underground drinking" outside of adult supervision in student rooms and apartments were same age individuals congregate and because of lack of knowledge of responsible drinking behaviours.

Because the current laws are not working, the need for alternative approaches from the experience of other, and more ancient cultures, who do not have these problems need to be tried. Groups such as Italians, Greeks, Chinese and Jews, who have few drinking related problems, tend to share some common characteristics. Alcohol is neither seen as a poison or a magic potent, there is little or no social pressure to drink, irresponsible behaviour is never tolerated, young people learn at home from their parents and from other adults how to handle alcohol in a responsible manner, there is societal consensus on what constitutes responsible drinking. Because the the 18 year old drinking age law is not working, it would be useful if new techniques and laws where tried out.

While there has been a decrease in per capita consumption and motor vehicle crashes, unfortunately, during this same time period there has been an INCREASE in other problems related to heavy and irresponsible drinking among age youth. Most of these reported. Significant increase were also found for other variables: "cutting class after drinking" jumped from 9% to almost 12%; "missing class because of hangover" went from 26% to 28%; "getting lower grade because of drinking" rose from 5% to 7%; and "been in a fight after drinking" increased from 12% to 17%. All of these behaviours are indices of irresponsible drinking.