COMMENT: Raising a glass to drinking age

I WAS manning the barbecue at a friend’s housewarming a few weekends ago and a young man from Texas sidled up to see if he could give me a hand.

I WAS manning the barbecue at a friend's housewarming a few weekends ago and a young man from Texas sidled up to see if he could give me a hand.

He's backpacking around Australia and picking up work in exchange for food and board on the house and property.

I asked if he wanted a beer, as you do when tending barbecue, and he declined even though he's 18.

In Texas, he explained, you have to be 21 to drink, and even though he could legally drink in Australia he wasn't going to touch a drop.

Amazing, when you are used to certain rules, how it can work.

I was thinking about that when I read a story we have in today's paper about the perennial question in Australia - should the drinking age be raised to 21?

A new report from the National Drug Law Enforcement Research Fund said it should raised to help curb alcohol-related violence.

Team Leader of BUDDI Community Drug Action Team, Nicqui Yazdi, said she was "all for it".

But ouf Facebook readers and, I suspect, our newspaper readers would be divided on this issues.

Cody Runciman said: "Plenty of 14-17 (year-olds) get trashed and end up in trouble now. Why would it be any different if the legal age changed?"

As the father of two teenagers, if you let your children go to a party these days it is pretty hard to enforce the no alcohol rule.

Teenagers are great at sneaking in things or pre drinking before a party or saying they are going somewhere and then going elsewhere.

In this era of age compression I feel it is too hard to wind the clock back on this one.

Nothing beats education and parental guidance.