In a column Tuesday (“Don’t lower the drinking age,” by Sue Carlton), it was claimed that moving the drinking age to 18 will not cure binge drinking. I couldn’t agree more, mainly because there is no cure for binge drinking.

What most “grown up” Americans won’t admit is that binge drinking is bloody good fun. Is there any finer way to spend a summer’s afternoon than in a garden, enjoying the sunshine, surrounded by friends and hosing back the beers like there’s no tomorrow?

You see in Europe, we tend to start drinking in our mid-teens. Alcohol is not such a big taboo, and this brings certain advantages.

First, it lets you know where your limits are, and this has numerous social advantages. For example, it stops you from embarrassing yourself at nice events where alcohol is served and makes you better and more eloquent company while reducing the chances of fornicating (that’s a posh word for making out) with someone that perhaps you shouldn’t be fornicating with.

Yes there are social issues associated with drinking, such as drunken loutish behavior. But ask yourself this: Is having the drinking age at 21 instead of 18 going to eradicate this problem or is it actually going to simply delay it for 3 years?

Part of the problem here is the alcohol industry. Actually, that’s not fair — the problem is with the people who govern the alcohol industry.

A pub is not defined by the décor or the drinks served therein, it is defined by the ambiance and atmosphere. Pubs are supposed to be welcoming and there’s nothing welcoming about a large bloke with no neck scrutinizing your passport longer than the guy at immigration ever did.

The truth of the matter is that it’s easier to get into this country than it is to get a beer once you’re in — and the reason for this is that the penalties are ridiculously harsh for serving underage patrons.

I don’t know how much is spent policing this law, but I bet it’s a lot. Imagine how much money and manpower could be saved by reducing the age to 18. Suddenly underage drinking at college would disappear overnight!

So it doesn’t really matter what age you let people start drinking, moderation is learned through experience. Binge drinking will always occur and what will cure others will probably be the same thing that cured me: They’ll grow out of it!

Matt Holmes

Boulder (by way of England)

RUSSIAN SHOWDOWN

Looks as if we’re heading towards a showdown with the Russians once again.

Our elites need to gin up a new threat, so as to continue justifying their three quarters of a trillion dollar war budget. So it’s time to throw down NATO’s military gauntlet over the ridiculous Republic of Georgia, a tiny nation known, if for anything, as the birthplace of Josef Stalin and the locus of a strategic oil pipeline financed by Western interests.

Most voters are unaware of John McCain’s close personal and political stakes in Georgia. One of his top aides has been a paid lobbyist for the Georgian regime. McCain has publicly encouraged Georgia’s impulsive president Mikheail Shaaskavili’s most imprudent military gestures against Russia’s natural interests in the Caucasus region.

In the early 1990s, the people of Ossetia fought and won a war of secession against Georgia. Since then, Russian peacekeepers, authorized under European legal auspices, have been defending the Ossetians from Georgia’s heavy hand. Nevertheless, on Aug. 7, Shaaskavili’s troops staged a midnight attack on Ossetia, murdering some two dozen Russian peacekeepers and at least several hundred sleeping Ossetians.

Not one leading Democrat or Republican official has uttered a word of condemnation about Georgia’s perfidy in this connection. Instead, we’re told it’s all Russia’s fault. Let the new Cold War commence.

With the Iraq expedition winding down in intensity and McCain’s presidential ambitions in need of a freshly belligerent theme, U.S. military industrial corporate oligarchs see future prospects for bigger profits and domestic political control through stoking tensions and instability along Russia’s borders.

Cord MacGuire

Boulder