Dan's Landing

I love RSS Feed Readers. When the feeds work, I grab a lot of very interesting articles, tips, etc. I happened to read this piece by my friend Joey. I’m going to categorize it as one of his opinion pieces.

Any way, in it he toys with the idea of the drinking age in Ontario (19 years) being lowered to the age of majority (18 years). His view is that the government won’t lower the age because “this would be political suicide for any government that has the courage to treat adults like, well, adults.”

I am inclined to argue that’s not the reason. Apart from the whole political and maybe financial sides of things there are social issues to consider. Underage drinking is a reality. Unfortunately so are young drunk drivers. Keeping the legal drinking age where it is now is not hurting anyone. The government has no reason to change it. It is a well established age of passage in our current culture. Everyone knows the age to drink is 19. Many respect it and many don’t.

Joey suggests the age should be lowered since it was set this high due to highschool’s grade 13 which does not exist anymore. That’s hardly a good reason for it.

Maclean’s magazine has a section I have not previously visited, their forum section. It acts as a normal forum (duh!) where you are encouraged to discuss the articles in the particular section of the magazine you’ve read (i.e. Education related articles in the Education Forums).

This provides at least some way to comment on the articles posted rather than not having any say at all as an outsider of the “University Panel.” Check the forums out and have your say.

(I think it’s only fair to warn you that the presentation and layout of the forums isn’t the best I’ve seen but hey, it will do for now)