I found a good one today! It's an article from MSNBC written by Alex Johnson about the growing push to lower the legal drinking age. Apparently the National Youth's Rights association is backing a drive to put lowering the drinking age (to 18) front and center in the political arena. I don't even know where to begin with this. First, who are the National Youth's Rights Association? Are they seventeen year old high school students with a lot of mojo? Seriously, if they are, I'm impressed with the diligent hard work on getting such an important topic so widely noticed. That takes commitment! My question would be why would such obviously talented youths feel that this topic is a worthy cause? Seriously, if you can get something like this noticed, think about what you could do for poverty in America. Teaching inner city kids about why they shouldn't drink and do drugs. Heck, teaching suburban kids about why they shouldn't drink or do drugs. The list of alternate topics, better topics is endless:
Teen pregnancy awareness
Aids/STD prevention
College admittance
Tutoring
Adopt a country
Violence in Darfur
Violence in America
Why to stay out of gangs
Community involvement
Need I say more?
Yes! I know I'm ranting here but it's really kind of fun on such a no brainer. I'm not even getting into the issues about safety and addiction, that's a whole other post! C'mon parents, what are we teaching our kids? That it's ok to drink as long as you do it in the open? Folks, there was just a big push to raise the driving age because we don't think teenage drivers are ready to be behind the wheel alone so early! Let's make up our minds, do we think they're ready or not?
And to those who say "well they can vote and they can fight for our country" I say raise the voting a draft ages.
2 comments:
Hi-
My name is Keith and I am on the board of directors of the National Youth Rights Association. I can tell you a bit more about our group. We have over 7,000 people
(mostly high school and college students) who have joined the group nationwide and several local chapters.
I believe that 5 or 6 of our 9 directors are under 21 and a few are under 18.
We are about FAR more than lowering the drinking age (unfortunately the media ignores our other issues).
We are all about youth gaining a voice and having a say in the broader American society. We believe that the voting age should be lowered so that high school students can make their voices heard. We support an end to curfews and a student's bill of rights.
For much more about us, go to youthrights.org
Keith,
Thanks for your message. It's interesting to hear exactly what the National Youth Rights Association does. As you have read, I think this organization must truly be filled with outstanding young people, it takes a huge amount of commitment to accomplish such tasks. I will have to respectfully disagree with The Nation Youth Rights Association on it's stand of no curfews and lowering the voting age and I believe my stance is clear on the drinking age thing. My question would be this, should this organization acheive these goals, what are they doing to prepare the young people of this country to hold such great responsibility?
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