more emphasis just needs to be put on contraceptive usage.
when i was in a health class in high school, or just in any class and the teacher had to mention something sexual as part of the lesson or even made a comment about anything sexual, they had to preface it by saying something like "And Carroll County schools don't encourage premarital sexual activity..." when it would've been so much more practical and less puritanical to say something like "We don't recommend unprotected or promiscuous sex"
*shrug* yeah, abstinance only is a good idea but kids aren't going to follow it and they're just left uninformed so that they aren't protecting themselves.
I never got any of that. People have sex, it's nothing new. We're hardly having more of it than people of any other era were. Realising that a puritanical hangover, of their own invention, has contributed to the escalating numbers of teenage pregnancies would be a good start.
Interesting side note though - sexual education here is quite open, it's not religiously driven, but rationally. Kids are told bluntly about sex, its consequences and how to responsibly go about it if they decide to. We still have the highest teenage pregnancy rate in Europe, so that may suggest it's more a deep rooted cultural problem than anything else.
eeek.... yeah, why do they want to do that?
We have a MASSIVE problem with underage drinking, it's a social problem, as well as a financial burden on the state. As it stands many underage kids can find someone who is 18, or looks close enough, to buy them alcohol. The basic idea is that if you raise it to 21 it becomes more difficult for underage kids to A- Know/find someone 21 or over willing to buy them alcohol and B - Less likely a a child (i.e anyone under 18) will look 21 or over. It's simple enough reasoning, but will really only be a token gesture.
Plus, Lad, I gotta say, if you were over 21 you may not have problems with this legislation. As it happens, I'm not sure they would put it into force retroactively, for it would be stripping a proporition of the nation of a right protected by law. If you're over 18 now, you'd probably be OK.
