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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Orius" data-source="post: 5237607" data-attributes="member: 8863">I think what's really needed isn't so much an arbitrary age, but rather an expectation of responsibilities.  So it doesn't bother me if the drinking age is at 18, as long as drinkers that age are held to the same standards as adults.  Naturally there's going to be a problem if legal drinking at 18 leads to (well more) college binge drinking.  Even now with the age at 21, a lot of people seem to think you spend your 21st birthday going to the bar and getting smashed without having to use a fake ID.  It's not just booze either, but things like tobacco, sex, etc.  You're considered an adult now, so try to act like one, and it's not a suggestion.  Yeah, a lot of everyday matters are delegated to the states rather than the federal government.  Many time the states do the same things, particularly with criminal law enforcement, but in other areas like say driver's licenses, education, guns, and so on, they sometime differ.  It frees up the federal government from having micromanage a lot of stuff by delegating responsibilities, which would be more difficult in a country as large as the US. At least, I consider that an advantage with my political views, that and state governments are a bit more repsonsive to the public than the federal government.  Though sometimes the feds use spending to force the states to do what they want anyway (that's how we got the drinking age at 21 for all states, Washington threatened to withhold funding for highways if the states didn't comply).  This page explains it fairly well: <a href="http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AmericanFederalism" target="_blank">American Federalism - Television Tropes & Idioms</a>Anyway, it's probably similar to the breakdowns between the EU and its member states, except that the American states aren't sovereign nations.</blockquote>

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