bring forth the drinking gourd.....

mmmm… This national debate on lowering the drinking age is an interesting discourse, especially reviewing the muddled mumblings of those of the law and order crowd. For example:

Health and safety experts have reacted with dismay, because raising the drinking age has saved many lives. In 2001, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reviewed 49 studies published in scientific journals and concluded that alcohol-related traffic crashes involving young people increased 10 percent when the drinking age was lowered in the 1970s and decreased 16 percent when the drinking age was raised. The retreat from a lower drinking age translates into some 900 lives saved each year among 16- to 20-year-olds. Those who would argue that other factors, such as safer cars, are responsible should take a good look at numbers posted by Mothers Against Drunk Driving showing alcohol-related traffic fatalities among 16- to 20-year-olds decreasing 60 percent between 1982 and 2006 while non-alcohol-related fatalities increased 34 percent

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Wow, lives saved. No!! That is the first of many fallacies buried within this stereotypical editorial. No lives are ever saved; it is a philosophical absurdity to suggest one can save a life. We can merely prolong the inevitable death. Death surrounds us all the time, although here in the US we do our best to hide it. And one of the ways we hide it, is to send our 18 to 21 years old kids off to foreign wars where they are killed and maimed by the tens of thousands, invisible to the public eye. And to help them survive, our lovely government and its contractors, provide endless amounts of un-"controlled substances" to the troops, from steroids to amphetamines, from painkillers to mood elevators, etc., et al, along with copious quantities of tobacco and alcohol, to “encourage” the kids (I have been interviewing Afghan/Iraq war veterans, some with multiple tours in-country, all of whom have mentioned the constant, insisted upon, use of drugs, tobacco, and alcohol).

So, let's get this right shall we? Some in this country, especially among those who support the war and the use of our "children" between the ages of 18-21 to sacrifice their lives for others profits, think that lowering the drinking age to the same mark as that by which we say it is okay for our sons and daughters to destroy their lives (and the lives of a million others) is simply not okay. They are glaringly hypocritical and dangerously evil. Ignore them until they offer a more sane and reasonable thesis.