Binge drinking. Alcohol poisoning. Alcohol abuse. Drink driving. Domestic violence. We are constantly being bombarded with information about the consequences of drinking, disastrous for ourselves and others. No-one can deny that these problems exist, they do. There is no doubt we have issues in our society such as alcoholism, drink driving and binge drinking. But is raising the drinking age going to make any difference? I’m not sure that it will.
Firstly, raising the drinking age would create “double standards” in our society. By the age of 18 people are allowed to vote, have sex, get married, and die for their country. Are we saying that our 18 year olds are mature enough to do these things, take the countries future into their own hands or to go and die on a battlefield in a foreign country, but not mature enough to have a drink? It just doesn’t add up. If you were to raise the drinking age to 21, there would be a 5 year difference between the age to go to war or to have sex and the drinking age. Do either of these things require less maturity or responsibility than drinking? We need to decide on an age, ONE age at which we believe the majority of citizens of our country to be mature and responsible and this age needs to apply to all laws of a similar nature.
People often cite issues such as binge drinking as a key reason for why the drinking age should be raised. Binge drinking is becoming a huge problem in New Zealand, and it is becoming a part of the youth culture in this country. The best definition of binge drinking is to drink as much as you possibly can until you are completely “wasted”. Apparently this is cool. Would raising the drinking age help to reduce the number of people, especially young people, par-taking in binge drinking? I fear not. In fact, it may even make it that much cooler. You see, the more un-attainable we try to make an object appear, the more attractive it becomes. We always want what we can’t have. This is especially relevant for youth – the main culprits. Teenagers are known for their “rebellious” behaviour, for trying to defy authority and their determinedness to not conform to the expectations of the older age group. If we were to increase the legal drinking age, it could just make these issues, such as binge drinking even more common and wide-spread. Why? Because it would make it even more cool.
Another important thing to consider is, would it be fair to raise the drinking age? Essentially you would be punishing everyone for the actions of a few. The majority of 18 year olds are responsible and safety conscious. The majority of 18 year olds would not binge drink or drink and drive. Therefore it is important to remember that it is not the entire population of 18-21 year olds who are causing these problems. We also have to think, if, at age 18, someone is still immature, still playing up, what difference will another few years make? Also, its alright for the people proposing these laws, they are 30, 40, or even 50 years past 21, so it doesn’t bother them if an 18 year old is no longer allowed to drink, they have already had their fun. How would they have reacted when they were 18 if the ‘old people’ raised the drinking age? Not only would raising the legal drinking age be inefficient, it would also be unfair.
We also need to remember, do we want to keep new Zealand a place where we can make our own choices. Would raising the drinking age just be another dangerous step towards a nanny-state in which the government controls our lives? People are always going to make mistakes, make stupid decisions or have a lapse of common-sense. It is part of human nature. We can legislate until our faces go blue, but is it really going to change anything? I think not. Sometimes we just need to “let go”, and let people make choices for themselves about what they want to do and how much risk they are willing to put themselves under.
So, should the drinking age be raised to 21? I do not believe it would have the desired positive effects. I do not believe that it will stop young people drinking, or binge drinking as the case may be. In fact, it may just achieve the opposite; it could make activities such as binge-drinking even more attractive. Raising the drinking age would also create a society in which there are double standards, young people are allowed to do so many things which require just as much, of not more, maturity than drinking. It would also be unfair to prevent those responsible 18-21 year olds from drinking; they should not be punished for others wrong-doing. Finally, people need to make the choice for themselves, they don’t need the government holding their hands, telling them what to do.
Thursday, May 1, 2008
New Zealand: A Safe Place?
The Collins Dictionary states that safe means 1. Giving security or protection from harm, 2.Free from danger 3.taking or involving no risks. Can any country give total security or protection from harm? Is anywhere free from danger? Is it possible to live anywhere without taking risks? The simple answer to all of these questions is no. It is impossible to be completely safe, ever. The very nature of life is unsafe! However, is New Zealand a relatively safe place to live, compared with other destinations? Would we be wrong in believing we live in a country which has less risks associated with it than other nations?
Crime. On average 100,000 New Zealanders are convicted of some sort of crime each year. Much of this may be petty crime, such as graffiti or vandalism, or theft of something like a handbag or bike. However much of the crime in New Zealand is malicious, and intended to hurt others, and the rates of this are increasing. How often are we now hearing on the news about a murder, rape, physical abuse, grievous bodily harm? Another innocent person who was just in the wrong place at the wrong time? However, though our crime rates are higher than we might want and increasing, they are not necessarily that bad compared to other countries. Take South Africa for example. It is widely acknowledged that in Johannesburg, you can’t just walk down the street without being at risk. People live in compounds behind barbed wire and multiple security gates. So when you compare our crime to this sort of situation, it begins to seem rather insignificant.
New Zealand is also free of a lot of problems which make other countries unsafe. New Zealand is a relatively safe place to live in regarding your health. It is not perfect by any means, but when you compare us to other places, you realise how lucky we are. HIV aids is ravaging Africa. Malawi, a small country in southern Africa is believed to have over 1 million aids sufferers. A report suggests that 70% of hospital deaths in 2000 were AIDS related. The epidemic has heavily affected children. At the end of 2005, an estimated 91,000 children in Malawi were living with HIV, and over half a million children had been orphaned by AIDS. So is New Zealand safe in this respect? Very. Due to New Zealand’s isolation we are also less at risk from any possibly impending pandemics, such as bird flu which is creating much hype among medical professionals in the last few years. We aren’t completely immune, but the fact that we are so far away from anyone else, does make it easier to manage.
Another way in which New Zealanders are living in a safe environment is when looking at the case of international conflict. Terrorism. The Trade towers, the Madrid bombings and the London bombings. People overseas are afraid to use public transport, to work in large buildings or to go to huge public gatherings because of the risk of a suicide bomber or chemical gas attack. New Zealand is again, largely separated from this kind of activity. We have a foreign policy based on non-intervention and we did not take part in conflicts such as the War in Iraq. Therefore we are less of a target for violence. Our isolation also makes us safer in the case of foreign wars, or world wars. Neither WWI nor WWII ever got here, simply because we were too far away from the main battlefields of Europe. Our citizens were never under the attack of air-raids or living with the threat of chemical warfare. So again, in this respect we are better off.
Basically I think it comes down to, New Zealand may not be as safe as we night like to think it is, however nowhere is ever going to be completely safe and what we have in new Zealand is definitely a whole lot better to what you might find elsewhere in the world. We are certainly not crime free; in fact we are far from it. But we are still relatively safe in our homes and in most areas, 99.9% of the time you will be perfectly fine if you just go for a walk down the street. So in the end, I believe we have it relatively easy. On most occasions we can live our daily lives without interruption and we are not living in constant fear. And this, I believe, constitutes a safe country.
Crime. On average 100,000 New Zealanders are convicted of some sort of crime each year. Much of this may be petty crime, such as graffiti or vandalism, or theft of something like a handbag or bike. However much of the crime in New Zealand is malicious, and intended to hurt others, and the rates of this are increasing. How often are we now hearing on the news about a murder, rape, physical abuse, grievous bodily harm? Another innocent person who was just in the wrong place at the wrong time? However, though our crime rates are higher than we might want and increasing, they are not necessarily that bad compared to other countries. Take South Africa for example. It is widely acknowledged that in Johannesburg, you can’t just walk down the street without being at risk. People live in compounds behind barbed wire and multiple security gates. So when you compare our crime to this sort of situation, it begins to seem rather insignificant.
New Zealand is also free of a lot of problems which make other countries unsafe. New Zealand is a relatively safe place to live in regarding your health. It is not perfect by any means, but when you compare us to other places, you realise how lucky we are. HIV aids is ravaging Africa. Malawi, a small country in southern Africa is believed to have over 1 million aids sufferers. A report suggests that 70% of hospital deaths in 2000 were AIDS related. The epidemic has heavily affected children. At the end of 2005, an estimated 91,000 children in Malawi were living with HIV, and over half a million children had been orphaned by AIDS. So is New Zealand safe in this respect? Very. Due to New Zealand’s isolation we are also less at risk from any possibly impending pandemics, such as bird flu which is creating much hype among medical professionals in the last few years. We aren’t completely immune, but the fact that we are so far away from anyone else, does make it easier to manage.
Another way in which New Zealanders are living in a safe environment is when looking at the case of international conflict. Terrorism. The Trade towers, the Madrid bombings and the London bombings. People overseas are afraid to use public transport, to work in large buildings or to go to huge public gatherings because of the risk of a suicide bomber or chemical gas attack. New Zealand is again, largely separated from this kind of activity. We have a foreign policy based on non-intervention and we did not take part in conflicts such as the War in Iraq. Therefore we are less of a target for violence. Our isolation also makes us safer in the case of foreign wars, or world wars. Neither WWI nor WWII ever got here, simply because we were too far away from the main battlefields of Europe. Our citizens were never under the attack of air-raids or living with the threat of chemical warfare. So again, in this respect we are better off.
Basically I think it comes down to, New Zealand may not be as safe as we night like to think it is, however nowhere is ever going to be completely safe and what we have in new Zealand is definitely a whole lot better to what you might find elsewhere in the world. We are certainly not crime free; in fact we are far from it. But we are still relatively safe in our homes and in most areas, 99.9% of the time you will be perfectly fine if you just go for a walk down the street. So in the end, I believe we have it relatively easy. On most occasions we can live our daily lives without interruption and we are not living in constant fear. And this, I believe, constitutes a safe country.
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