Liquor laws and the drinking age

Since the Law Commission issued it’s recent report on Liquor Laws there have been various articles in the press including a number of editorials – this Herald one is an example..

Now a suggestion that seems to find favour with some is raising the legal age for drinking to 20, or at least the age to buy liquor.

Adam finds this very confusing. Some people have been advocating the lowering of the voting age to 16. The legal age of consent is 16. You can get married at 16, vote at 18, drive car at 15, join NZ armed forces at 17, join Police at 17, but must be 18 at graduation.

So if, as Adam read somewhere, young people are not to be trusted with alcohol as they are young and immature and unable of making a wise decision, until magically on their 20th birthday they metamorphose into wise, mature and rational individuals, then why do we let them:-

• marry
• conceive children
• vote
• drive cars
• go to war
• arrest us, if a police officer

Conceivably the decision making involved in all of those activities requires as much, indeed probably more maturity and decision making skill than the consumption of alcohol.

On the basis of the attitudes towards alcohol, surely we should raise the age for participating in the activities noted above to at least 20 – perhaps even higher.

The problem with alcohol has little to do with whether or not you are 20 or 18, nor with the availability of alcohol, but with societal attitudes and culture. We will still have the problem if we raise the age to 20 and reduce the number of outlets and restrict opening hours.

All that will do is drive aspects of the problem out of sight and underground.

Many of the suggestions in the press and elsewhere are the result of moral posturing by politicians and others, including lobbyists who seem to get their kicks from seeking to impose their views on the majority.

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