Dear Editor
When I started high school in 1945, the legal drinking age was 21. As a result, in our school, drinking wasn't the "thing to do" until we were about the age of 18. That's the age when some of our friends were already 21 and could legally buy and consume alcohol. I remember when I was playing in a dance band at the local Legion hall a few weeks after I graduated, someone bought each band member a Coca-Cola which had some alcohol mixed in. When my dad found out about it, he tried to have that hall shut down.
Later, at that same high school, when the legal age was lowered to 18, with the rationale that most 18-year-olds drink anyway, drinking became the "thing to do" for those as young as 14 or even younger and for the same reason 18-year-olds drank when the legal age was 21. That's just how human nature works.
Now, members of the Sask. Party are seriously considering lowering the legal age from 19 to 18. In the United States, where many states have begun to raise the legal age back to 21, the unfortunate effects of the lowering the legal age have long been apparent. As a teacher, I also observed the cultural change in schools where there was a lower legal age. Rather than something only the really "wild" older students would do, drinking by the much younger students had become the "thing to do." MLAs who care about our society should be seriously considering raising the legal age back to 21, instead of trying to make a bad situation worse.
The one is when alcohol begins to be consumed recreationally, the more likely that person is to have alcohol become a real problem in life. The human brain is still in its development state until at least the age of 21.
The first thing to be lost by being influenced by alcohol is judgement. Judgement is largely a product of experience, so young people usually have less of it than older folks. A 14-year-old who is drinking will have even less, or sometimes, none. The effects can be tragic, especiallyif he is driving a car. He may still appear sober, but may have already lost his sense of judgement. I'm sure most people can think of at least one example.
This may be an opportunity for our own MLA, Herb Cox, to do something worthwhile at the legislature and raise his voice against the madness of ignoring all the evidence to the contrary and lowering the legal drinking age In Saskatchewan.
Russell Lahti
Battleford
