Changing The Legal Age Limit

My classmate, Jason Ebeling, wrote a post about raising the legal drinking age to 25, titled “Legal Drinking Age 21 or 25?”  He proves a valid point that some 21-year-olds are too irresponsible to be drinking, sometimes getting themselves and others killed.  What bothers me is that people against 21-year-olds legally drinking tend to provide their argument with horror stories of young people dying due directly or indirectly to alcohol.  What do you think normally happens when young people drink?  If it’s a story like the one Ebeling wrote about, you might believe too much of what you hear from the media.  Most of the time young people drink, situations similar to what happens when their older counterparts drink occur, with a little less maturity. 

I liked that Ebeling tied the issue to personal experience in his post.  It showed he can somewhat relate to a younger and older audience.  Regarding the age limit of alcoholic consumption though, unless you’ve had a life-altering experience in between the time you’re 21 and 25 (such as Ebeling having a child), you probably aren’t going to change or mature all that much.

I also noticed that in Ebeling’s blog post, he only had one reason for the legal drinking age to be raised to 25, which was that at 21, people are too irresponsible to handle alcohol.  Although I am against the age limit being raised, I would have provided at least one other valid reason for raising the age limit, such as how alcohol can affect a still-developing 21-year-old body.

The age for legal alcoholic consumption is a hot topic that may be changed in our near future in Texas.  It is one that the young will be more likely to participate in, which is just what some political observes have been asking for, right?  For now, those “irresponsible” 21-24 year olds who are not a “functioning part of society” will just have to continue “[getting] drunk and then get laid.”

Republicans Use Private Issue As Just Another Political Move

Recently, one of my favorite attention-getting disasters, Governor Rick Perry, must have been unsatisfied with his failed GOP campaign fiasco and decided to take a stance against a program actually benefitting Texas.  The only reasons I can come up with for his ridiculous claims of government overreach is that he wanted to get back in the action and go against the Obama administration.  I don’t know what he expects to accomplish with his bold claims of funding the Women’s Health Program without federal help, doesn’t he realize the only people taking him seriously anymore are crazed super-conservatives.

             If Texas plans on ever overcoming the damage done by its republican politicians concerning federal funding for Women’s Health Program (WHP) through Medicaid, our elected officials need to abandon their stance on barring women’s health care providers that are in any way affiliated with abortion providers from receiving funding.  Perry and other lawmakers have put in to motion something I worry cannot be undone.  Perry defends his position on defunding women’s health providers associated with abortion clinics with the state law prohibiting taxes from going to organizations that promote abortion.  The federal government, through Medicaid, will not fund a state program that violates federal law.  This particular law prohibits states from discriminating against qualified providers.  The main target of Perry’s issue is Planned Parenthood.  What blows Perry’s argument to nothing is the fact that not one of the 11 Planned Parenthood clinics, once funded but now closed due to budget cuts, provided abortion care.  What these combined 11 clinics did provide in there last year were 20,565 clients health exams, including: 13,184 cervical cancer screenings, 14,163 breast cancer screenings, and 33,974 sexually transmitted infection screenings/treatments.  And Rick Perry publically boasts the state’s targeting of Planned Parenthood.  The people responsible for this budget cut anticipated it to cripple Planned Parenthood, ending the “abortion industry.” 

            Unfortunately, defunding family-planning clinics will likely backfire on the Republicans.  With an increase of closing clinics, more women will be left without health care.  Other losses likely to occur are an increased number of unplanned Medicaid-paid births, an increased number of cancers detected in later stages of disease, increase in abortions, higher rates of STD’s, more children forced to be a part of the Children’s Health Insurance Program, and all resulting in costing us more money that we don’t have.  If the Republicans hadn’t been so shortsighted, they’d realized the budget cut wont benefit anyone, putting an unnecessary burden on all of Texas.

            Even if Governor Perry and the rest of the Republican party’s argument for standing up to “Washington bureaucracy because it’s the right thing to do” were accurate, Perry still used this issue for marketing preparations for a potential presidential run (which didn’t work out, did it?).  Perry, Greg Abbott, and the rest of those taking a similar stand don’t genuinely care about women’s health care, as do the women it actually affects.  This is just another building block for campaigning to them.