Make ready for "Abschießen": from 21 clock is darkened, admission only with a password. Patty, Chris and Jonas rummage black sheets, and bring it carefully on the window of their apartment to house. The other fellow of the State University of San Diego, meanwhile, make for deafening music and the most important mountains of beer cans and vodka bottles. "Let's get wasted!" - "Let us drink," it is said every Friday evening. Not only students in this house.
In the middle-class district, the campus of Southern California coastal town surrounds equip every weekend, hundreds of young people for "Abschießen". Until Monday morning, they have many of their fellow students as the whole country only one goal: Drink until Abwinken. To meet America's growing elite nerve their rigid society, as in the United States is the only beverage allowed from the age of 21. What seems like a paradox: The escalating University booze have a debate on lowering the age-igniting.
"What is prohibited, what makes us really fun," says Lisa, 19, laughing. The economy student sits with her five housemates inside at the kitchen table and "glows before." With two bottles of vodka. Each fills a small plastic cup brandy with the cheap booze, and then called it "shot", says ex and hopp. "In 15 rounds," says Lisa, "here comes not from us out." Finally, all want the best mood, when it goes over to the house party of Patty, Chris and Jonas. It klackert on the floor after each "shot" fly six plastic cups on the floor. In between, take a juice, then a new round of plastic cups on the table.
Who can stand still, has lost
Lisa and her roommate have a hard weeks behind it. Lectures, exams, lectures. "From Monday to Thursday will be tough gebüffelt," she says. "Since we know nothing. But from Friday, because it only means: Everybody should be wasted." Those who look straight at night and on both legs can stand, which is uncool, and has lost. A Code of thousands of students across the country.
Particularly vulnerable are the Freshmen, usually first in 21 years. You do not at Spring Break, the annual Sauf festival on the beach, orderly crash, but also in university life. In a study by the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) was nearly half of the students investigated a university, at least once in two weeks in a coma drinking participate. The institute estimates that in the U.S. each year, about 5,000 minors directly or indirectly by alcohol consumption die - counted traffic accidents, suicides, fights, injuries and fires after proliferating parties in student houses.
Two fellow Lisa had stitches with a knife to the hospital after being at a beach party to the dispute had been a student. Fortunately, the police were not far away. Friday to Sunday, she in San Diego and other student centers patrol more often than usual. In raids party should primarily be underage drinkers caught, watchful neighbors help the officials.
"At 18 you can fight in Iraq - but should not drink"
But the students are on alert. Who through the darkened window, police erspäht proposes alarm. Immediately silent guests and music, the bottles disappear. Is still an under 21 caught, threatening fines and license - and disciplinary action by the universities.
They know the professors long course, what every weekend around them happen. About a hundred university presidents want Sauforgien the opposite effect: the reduction of the age limit for alcohol consumption to 18 years. Of this, they promise a more moderate use of alcohol, which is then no longer be hidden drunk. "The existing age limit of 21 infantilisiert students, but only provoked an immature behavior with alcohol and disrespect for the law," says John McCardell. The ex-president of the University of Middlebury in the U.S. state of Vermont, was instrumental in Amethyst Initiative professors involved.
"At 18, a young man in the United States to marry, adopt children, guardians for minors to acquire weapons, the president and as a soldier fighting in Iraq," says the retired professor. "There is no sense that he can not even trust responsibly deal with alcohol."
Is secretly drinking the worst?
Security experts and anti-alcohol lobbyists accuse the professors opposed to only from the responsibility to attempt to draw. They warn of a rapid increase in injuries and even deaths and argue for higher penalties for violations of the drinking ban. "We need to stop the consumption of alcohol as minors wink ritual for entering the adult world to see," says Vivian Faden from NIAAA in the "Washington Post".
ALCOHOL UNTIL 21: So there have been a MINDESTALTERTod TO KindesBis 1984 could each U.S. state's alcohol limit set. Nearly half allowed to drink from 18, the controls were more lax. Until a mother brought the ball rolling: Candy Lightner 13-year-old daughter Cari was in 1980 by a motorist angetrunkenen on a quiet side street in Fair Oaks (California) over and had been killed. The driver initially fled was a two-year prison sentence by the use in a work camp umgehen.Eine mother swore to trade Candy Lightner was stunned - especially as their children already were victims. Already with 18 months was Caris twin sister was seriously injured when a motorist had umgefahren their prams. And her son Travis was four years while playing in front of the house by a car had been run over. Little was temporarily paralyzed and was in a coma for several days. The accident driver was under the influence of sedative tablets confessed, but did go unpunished. According to Caris death Candy Ligh!
tner vowed to act: She founded the organization "Mothers Against Drunk Driving" (mothers against drunk driving). Reagan administration made mitIn television shows, before the expert groups and finally to the U.S. Congress canvassed Lightner for drunk Tax is no longer regarded as a minor offense, but hard to punish. My suggestion, the use of alcohol until age 21 to allow the government was under President Ronald Reagan supported. A specially set up Presidential Commission developed some 40 measures to address the problem of drunk driving to bekämpfen.Am end: No alcohol under 21 JahrenMit great concern, but you could see how young people from the U.S. states with more stringent laws for the weekend in droves over the weekend the border there were, where they already got alcohol, and then not infrequently sturzbetrunken home state. That was the breakthrough for a national minimum age for alcohol consumption: A law, the age limit at 21 years. While it continues the individual !
states free auszuscheren. You must, however, with economic con!
sequence
s: Ten percent less state aid for the road - and went immediately to all States.
The national minimum age for alcohol consumption has been in existence since 1984 (see box). And the alcohol Gags showed success: From the adoption of the law until 2007 was a study estimated the number of drinking Zwölftklässler from 70 to 45 percent, the number of fatal car accidents under the influence of alcohol by about 30 percent. According lose every year since about a thousand less people than before their lives due to accidents.
The law had binge-drinking in the first place on the campus brought argue, however, the professors of the Amethyst Initiative: watering students hidden, it is beyond any social control. "We have a real problem," said Dan Mote, president of the University of Maryland, in the "Washington Post". "Almost every sexual assault on our campus is in conjunction with alcohol. Altogether nearly every violent incident. In the debate about the age limit is not just about drinking and driving. It is a much wider field."
"50 hours flat drinking in seven days"
In the darkened hideout of the student house in San Diego is limited to the field this Friday evening on the size of a ping-pong plate. "Beer Pong" is especially popular: The players are grouped around a triangle filled with beer from plastic cups and try, with a Pingpongball in one of the cups to be taken. If one must be opponents in the cup a train empty. The others stand around and cheer on.
Lisa already depends on a mattress from. Last week, she says, it had another house party a sect Orgie celebrated. A giant, the fun was. "There was every guest to another shackled, until every brav emptied his bottle of bubbly had."
At the WG-kitchen hangs a list of participants with many signatures: A travel company advertises for a student Sauftour to Mexico. There is not only cheap liquor, it must also be aged 18 gezecht. "50 hours flat drinking in seven days," advertises the provider. Just after the border is going on.
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