Mixed views from UWI students on proposed increase to legal drinking age

Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­[email protected]

While their de­mo­graph­ic re­mains the fo­cus of a pro­posed in­crease to the le­gal age of drink­ing, smok­ing and gam­bling, some Year One and Two stu­dents of the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI), St Au­gus­tine, say they have mixed views of the pol­i­cy, with some en­dors­ing the de­ci­sion as a means of curb­ing reck­less be­hav­iour, while oth­ers ques­tion the prac­ti­cal­i­ty of leg­is­lat­ing be­hav­iour.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia at the cam­pus yes­ter­day, 20-year-old Ca­dence Ram­per­sad said she has been drink­ing at a young age, not­ing that she has moved on from the habit, pre­fer­ring to live a health­i­er lifestyle.

For this rea­son, she says she dis­agrees with the pol­i­cy, ar­gu­ing that young peo­ple should be al­lowed to make their own de­ci­sions, even if it in­cludes ex­pe­ri­enc­ing the harm­ful ef­fects of drink­ing to un­der­stand first­hand the need to avoid such habits.

“You learn from your mis­takes. You have to burn to learn, so how are you go­ing to know this is an is­sue if you don’t learn the is­sue for your­self.”

Ram­per­sad said she hoped there would be greater con­sul­ta­tion be­tween the pub­lic and the gov­ern­ment so that leg­is­la­tors would have a bet­ter un­der­stand­ing of drink­ing pat­terns, es­pe­cial­ly among young peo­ple, adding that she did not think that fines or pun­ish­ments were a so­lu­tion to such an is­sue.

How­ev­er, 22-year-old Ethan Ram­lo­gan said he was sup­port­ive of the pol­i­cy as he said it would be ben­e­fi­cial to pro­tect­ing his younger peers from de­struc­tive habits and be­hav­iour.

Ram­lo­gan said while he did not in­dulge in ex­ces­sive drink­ing, he saw first­hand the ef­fect of al­co­hol con­sump­tion among younger peo­ple, not­ing that a firmer stance was nec­es­sary to clamp down on un­der­age al­co­hol con­sump­tion.

He not­ed that while he felt the re­stric­tions would re­dound to some ben­e­fit, he felt the gov­ern­ment should still al­low peo­ple of le­gal work­ing age to be em­ployed by bars and night­clubs.

“I don’t think that’s a fair thing. A lot of peo­ple do those jobs to put them­selves through school; they may have kids and have to work and stuff, so it is an es­sen­tial to earn some mon­ey hon­est­ly rather than push­ing them to do the wrong thing.”

How­ev­er, one stu­dent, Vi­raz Sinanan-Moti­lal, 19, said while he agreed with the pol­i­cy in curb­ing al­co­holism, he was scep­ti­cal as to what such re­stric­tions would achieve, not­ing that at present there were sev­er­al bars and night­clubs that did not ver­i­fy the age of their cus­tomers.

“I won’t call any names, but I know a lot of them (bars and night­clubs) will find a way around it.

“Pass­ing the law is one thing, but en­forc­ing it is an­oth­er.”

He there­fore felt that if the pol­i­cy was made in­to leg­is­la­tion, more ro­bust mech­a­nisms were need­ed to en­sure it was ad­hered to.

How­ev­er, one UWI stu­dent who asked not to be named said en­force­ment was not as sim­ple as ask­ing for their iden­ti­fi­ca­tion card, as she said such a mech­a­nism in a fete or ca­su­al set­ting would be in­ef­fec­tive.

The stu­dent, who is 18-years-old, there­fore ques­tioned the prac­ti­cal­i­ty of re­al­is­ti­cal­ly leg­is­lat­ing be­hav­iour.

“If you will­ing to stand up and check every­one’s ID, I say go ahead, but it’s still go­ing to have drink­ing ei­ther way in the par­ty.

“No one’s go­ing to be walk­ing around the event ask­ing peo­ple, ‘You is 18? What you drink­ing?’”

She added that this would be par­tic­u­lar­ly dif­fi­cult to reg­u­late in a sit­u­a­tion where young peo­ple with friends of the le­gal drink­ing age had ac­cess to al­co­hol.

She said the suc­cess of this leg­is­la­tion would ul­ti­mate­ly de­pend on the choic­es and pref­er­ences of in­di­vid­ual peo­ple.