If they are old enough to vote and be sent to their death in war, they should be old enough to drink.

well I think those ages should be changed as well, have you talked to some of the 18 yr olds who are out there voting I tell you there are should be a test to determine if you can vote. if you can't name at least 2 people then you can't vote or if you cant name the current pesident or prime minister you can't vote.

sorry for going on thats my pet peeve.

The drinking age in Ireland is 18, and it works well.

Any younger ruins a developing liver.
Any older and we see social problems. If you start drinking at 18, you tend to space out drinking, you don't suffer as severe hangovers, and have lost interest in binging by age 20. Start at 21, you are tending to make up for lost time and thus drink more.

I think young people should be able to drink before they drive. That way, when they will come to the age of driving, they would not want to drink and drive.
In Israel you can drink legally at the age 18, but no one really forcing the law. A lot of teenager drink before they get to the legal age. They can even buy drinks and no one check them.

i am 18 and i drink legally in my country, but some people do try and treat us like children and say we shouldn't drink but to be honest i can handle my alcohol a lot better than my 50 year old mother and shes been drinking for god knows how many years, as for the voting system how can you say 18 year olds don't know anything and class us all as the same person i got to vote for the first time in the summer and it made me feel like a grownup for the first time since i turned 18 because i was actually given a say, so what if some people don't know every politicians name its a right of passage for young adults to make them feel like they are turning into adults, don't try and take that away from them just because you think that were all idiots maybe thats the education systems fault not personally ours!!

Yup, my country it's 16 for 'soft' alcohol like beer and wine and 18 for 'hard' alcohol with percentages over 20.
Works just fine. You learn to handle your alcohol before you start to drive (18) and you don't really feel the need to do the coma-drinking.. (drinking until you and up in a coma)

It's 18 here and i see it as a fine age. People do it earlier and a lot of the people i was friends with in school got bored of drinking heaps so now when they're older they won't drink heaps :) (and i don't drink anyways so eh)

Same as Pippi says, only I live in Holland.

I'm 14 years old, but I drink when I'm going out ;D

The legal age here in England is 18, but I think it's not gonna do too much harm to lower it by one year (16 years old is a bit too young for alcahol, 18 is too long a wait, <although I personally don't like alcohol>).

I don't understand how in America you can own a firearm (18 or something) before you can drink(21!!!), I mean, the gun is more likley to result in death that drinking (but I don't have a problem with guns being legal, they just need to be in the right hands).

The legal age here is 14 to drink with food and with your parents' permission; and 18 to order a drink yourself in a bar.

But if kids can drink with their meals from a young age, they will be able to learn to drink in moderation. The longer you make people wait, the more they think that drinking is something exciting, rebellious and taboo, and the more likely they are to go on a binge after an argument with their parents, and people die from that. It will be even worse because their bodies won't be used to alcohol. My parents sometimes let me drink wine, French kids are always drinking wine with their meals, is that bad? As a result of that, France has much less binge drinking.

Some people my age are never allowed to drink and so whenever their parents are away they secretly get loads of bottles of alcopops and get completely pissed, and they are drinking illegally. Is that less unhealthy than if their parents gave them a beer sometimes? No.

And seriously, American law is weird. Never mind giving them guns, having lethal weapons is a basic human right no matter whether you're a nutter or not, but god forbid they should have a drink.

i don't like that parents give their kids alcohol, it just seems shocking because it could turn into a serious problem in the childs life if they start early, and i'm not just saying health reasons...'cause i didn't think of that till then, lol, but i mean they can keep drinking and increasing. A lot of people go "oh i started drinking early so i can now hold my drinks well" and go overboard with the drinking which is horrible. You see all the young celebs in the papers drinking then going to rehab. I could never give a child alcohol, not in a million years.

Its fine the way it is

18 or 19.

It would be bad 18, because then people would come to highschool drunk, but I have no problem with 19,20, or 21 like it is.

i vacation in poland a lot, and the drinking age is around 18 or 19, it makes so much more sense!! it's not even the younger people who are wasted beyond belief, it's the older guys singin' folk songs by the fire :D ahhh europe!