Legal Studies: Increasing the Legal Drinking Age, Grade 11

Good afternoon madam speaker and fellow distinguished members of parliament. Today, I wish to discuss the potential of an amendment to the Queensland Liquor Act 1992. 

Laws are rules that ensure that society functions in a fair and legitimate way for all citizens. They protect our general safety and reinstate our individual rights as citizens.

Without laws, we would all live in fear. The strongest, hardest and most powerful person, group and or organisation would be in control of society as a whole.  

In Queensland, there are two main sources of law- common law and constitutional law. 

Common law is essentially judge made law. It is the result of judicial decisions of cases that have come before the courts. Decisions that are made by judges in the higher courts become precedents or rules which other judges in the lower courts are obliged to conform with. 

The Australian Constitution is the set of rules by which Australia is governed. It provides the basic rules for the government of Australia including the Commonwealth Parliament and the Parliament of each individual State. Therefore, even an Act passed by a Parliament is invalid if it is contrary to the Australian Constitution. 

Although many people under the age of 21 enjoy a drink of alcohol without any problems, our teens have developed an increasingly dangerous culture of heavy drinking and binge drinking over the last three decades, which over time can have serious consequences. 

The excessive consumption of alcohol not only harms the individual alone but society as a whole in terms of abuse- physical and physiological, crime and driving under the influence of alcohol. 

Under 155A of the Queensland Liquor Act 1992, a person must not sell liquor to a minor. If the person is the licensee of, or an approved manager working at the premises the maximum penalty is 250 units- equivalent to around $30,000. Under 156A an adult must not supply liquor to a minor at a private place, unless the adult is a responsible adult for the minor. The maximum penalty for this 80 units- equivalent to around $10,000. 

The legal age for purchasing and using alcohol in licensed premises was 21 in all Australian states however, these regulations were amended in the late 1960s in each state and the alcohol consumption age was lowered to a mere 18 years. Since then, the drinking age has been subject to political controversy around Australia.

Take Mathew Baldwin for example, are there any hands here that know who he is? 

Basically, during Mathew’s youth he grew and addiction for alcohol. He claims that his 20’s were a blur and when he wasn’t working he would be drinking. 

“Just the monster I became, violent behaviour, speaking to loved ones like I'd never speak to anyone. I lost relationships, friends. Just my mother and father having sleepless nights, having to come out and get me at bus stops, train stations, because I was out of money" he said.

The Australian National Council on Drugs found that one in eight deaths of Australians under 25 are alcohol related. Mathew said that there were numerous occasions when he came close to being in one of those statistics. 

A survey conducted by the Sydney Morning Herald at the end of the Schoolies festival at the Gold Coast in 2010 revealed that 75% of recently graduated students partook in drinking games and 64% of students consumed more than 10 alcoholic beverages per night. A 2013, Youth Risk Behaviour Survey found that among high schoolers 21% binge drink, 10% drove after drinking alcohol and 22% rode with someones who had been drinking alcohol. In the US, a review of seventeen studies in the various states that raised the drinking age found that the average number of young people involved in road accidents decreased by a whopping 16% with the increase of the drinking age. 

Furthermore, youths who drink alcohol are more likely to experience school problems such as absence and poor grades, social problems such as fighting, physical problems such as sickness and hangovers, physical and sexual assault all due to the fact that the alcohol depresses the part of the brain that controls inhibitions. It has also been proven that youth who start drinking before the age of 18 years, are five times more likely to develop alcohol dependance than individuals who begin drinking at or after 21 years. 

With the legal drinking age having previously been 21 years in Queensland, raising the drinking age from 18 years should not be a big issue. An American Gallup Poll found that 77% of Americans would oppose a federal law that lowers the drinking age to 18. It is therefore clear that the majority of the American population supports the current legal drinking age of 21 years. 

Although, many Queenslanders have said that they would oppose the increase of the drinking age to 21 many have argued that as the age of adulthood is 18 years, the drinking age should also be 18 years. It is clear that the amendment is being done in the best interest of the youth, general public and all other parties and overtime the stakeholders would see a significant improvement in public venues such as roads for example as it has been reported that the higher the drinking age, the lower the rate of traffic accidents- therefore minimising the risk for both the youth and other law abiding citizens.