Let's Treat 20 Year Old Adults Like The Children They Really Are

From the Iowa City Press-Citizen:

Though the Iowa City Council members interviewed have different views on a proposed 21-only ordinance for local drinking establishments, they agreed the issue should be put to the community for a vote.

On Wednesday, City Clerk Marian Karr validated a petition from the Committee for Healthy Choices calling for the council to decide whether to make it illegal for those younger than 21 to be in Iowa City bars after 10 p.m...

...Now, the council must decide whether it will approve the ordinance within 60 days or add the issue to the Nov. 6 Election Day ballot.

Council member Mike O'Donnell said he would like to let the community decide what regulations to place on the city's bars.

"Let's see how it plays out," O'Donnell said Thursday. "It'd be very easy for the council to just say, 'Hey, it's going to be 21,' but I'd like to see how a majority of the city feels."

O'Donnell said that although he thinks the Committee for Healthy Choices has the best intentions in mind with its ordinance, he opposes it.

"My apprehension would be that we would create more house parties, and I think that would happen," O'Donnell said. "Also, I think there could be more people driving while intoxicated."

O'Donnell added that he thinks creating a 21-ordinance will take the problem of underage and binge drinking that is mostly centralized around the downtown bar scene and scatter it throughout the community.

I wrote on this topic yesterday ("War Age: 18, Drinking Age: 21"), but a commenter on Nicholas Johnson's blog yesterday probably put it best:

...all these self righteous "Do as I say, not as I did" Baby Boomers need to realize that prohibition did not work in the 1920's and won't today.

It's ironic how in a liberal town like Iowa City, the local politicians have to deal with the idea of legislating morality.

I don't understand the idea of allowing people under the age of 21 into a bar and then kicking them out at 10pm. That seems like a really weird compromise and a large part of the problem.

On the other hand, and this blog has stated this many times before, if legal adults at 18, 19, and 20 years of age can get married, divorced, have babies, enter into contracts, join our country's military, drive a car, fly a plane, start a business, declare bankruptcy, and go $100,000 debt on a college education, they should be able to walk into a bar and have a drink. Why are we treating them like children?


Update: Welcome Instapundit readers! Yes, I forgot "voting" in that list. Consider it added. Enjoy the rest of this insightfully vulgar blog.