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Don't Lower Drinking Age

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The Tampa Tribune

Published: September 13, 2008

As a bar owner who was lucky enough to have a seat at the Gators-Hurricanes game in Gainesville last weekend, it feels like the right time to weigh in on the subject of moving the drinking age back to 18 - which I will always vehemently oppose.

I must report that I have never seen so much underage drinking in the vicinity of so many law enforcement personnel. Within a half mile of Florida Field there must have been 10,000 17- to 20-year-olds pouring down beers as fast as they could, all under the noses of Gainesville police and Alachua sheriff's deputies. Oh my!

The pizza joints adjoining the campuses had underage girls manning beer tubs serving youngsters with no IDs asked for or produced. Whoa Nellie!

I'm sure other large schools have similar problems.

A couple of points:

1. Law enforcement needs to enforce the laws.

2. Universities should not be pushing to lower the drinking age. They should be teaching responsibility and law abidance. While they would be taking themselves off the hook by lowering the age to 18, they would be putting your family and mine in jeopardy every time our families went out on the road.

3. Local officials are really wasting their time setting up stings to entrap a local bartender into serving an underage undercover officer maybe once a year. They need to plow more fertile grounds, like W. University Boulevard in Gainesville at game time.

ERIC SCHILLER

Tampa

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