I somehow missed a story that surfaced earlier this week about a New Jersey Assemblyman wanting to lower the drinking age to 18 in the state. I honestly knew nothing about it until my wife mentioned in to me Thursday and I actually questioned the accuracy of the story until doing a bit of research.

Sure enough Assemblyman Michael Patrick Carroll of Morris County introduced legislation to change the legal drinking age here in New Jersey to 18.

Carroll’s motivation is the often-used argument if you’re old enough to fight for your country you should be old enough to buy a legal drink. As a matter of fact he was quoted by NJ Advance Media as saying “if you’re old enough to hoist an M4 and shoot a terrorist, you’re old enough to hoist a beer.” That sounds great and will probably be supported by a majority of 17 to 20 year olds but they don’t vote on the measure which is not expected to gain any traction in Trenton. That’s the good news because lowering the drinking age would be nothing short of insanity.

I say this as one who benefited (if you want to call it that) when the drinking age was first lowered to 18 in 1973, mainly for those returning from Viet Nam and the fact that so many people were driving to New York where 18 was the age you could drink. However a main problem was you had 18 year olds still in high school so the legal age was raised to 19 in 1980 and then citing an increase in alcohol-related car accidents the state went back to 21 as the drinking age in 1983.

A year later the federal government basically made every state raise the age to 21 or they would lose millions of dollars in federal highway funds and that’s how things have stood for the last 32 years.

The 57-year old Carroll, who is the father of five feels that if you can vote, get married and buy a house at 18 you are mature enough to make choices when it comes to alcohol.   He also feels that today’s generation is more responsible than say he or I was and I do agree with that. From watching my own kids it seems like young people plan in advance how to handle transportation and they have more options than there were in the 70s.

However that’s not a good enough reason and this bill will likely not generate much support and die a fast death. Better the bill die in Trenton then an 18-year old driving drunk in Toms River.

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