Summary of Drinking Age Survey (International)

First, I would like to thank everyone who answered my survey.

In total, 12 people answered the international version. Out of the 12, 5 were male and 7 were female. The people who answered my survey came from Japan, with one exception. I think eleven people were my classmates. However, one person came from Madagascar, who was at the age of 50 or over. I don' t know how he found my survey, but I am thankful for having a person I totally do not know answer my survey.
Since our topic was on drinking age, I think I had an ideal age variation for my survey. There were people who were still under the legal drinking age, and those who were over 20. I was able to get the point of view from both sides.

 In the question: Are you concerned about drinking underage?, Most of the people were not really concerned about it. For university students, most people start drinking under the age of 20. Especially for Japanese students,  the juniors would have to follow the seniors. Most people cannot say no to what the seniors say. This is a cultural background in Japan. Something that the older person does or says is a must. These days, this custom is becoming loose, but it has not disappeared. Maybe this is the reason why people do not really care about drinking underage.

For the question Have you drank alcohol before the legal drinking age? 12 out of 10 people said YES. I left a space so that people who answered my survey could leave some comments.

・Because I entered college and everyone drinks underage

・I was interested in alcohol and wanted to try something new that I had never done before

・My parents let me for practice

・My seniors forced me to


  We could see from this result that people are less than concerned in drinking alcohol. I also thought from this result that there is no meaning to set the legal drinking age to 20 if nobody would follow it.
  Two people commented that they were forced to drink alcohol by their seniors. This is a big problem, because depending on the person, he or she might make their junior chug, which will lead to alcohol intoxication, which may lead the person to death. People who are not used to drinking alcohol has the probability of being intoxicated. Lately, we hear on the news that freshman university students die from alcohol intoxication, and this is becoming a big problem. These intoxications are caused by people around the victims, and if there is anyone who could stop from doing so, their life might have been saved.

 Although most people drank alcohol under the legal drinking age, the quiz that I gave them showed that they did not have the knowledge on who will take the responsibility if someone is caught drinking underage.
The answer to this question was that the offerer of the alcohol bears the responsibility. Only five people answered correctly, which was under 50%.

Besides Madagascar which does not have a certain legal drinking age, five people answered  that the government should lower the drinking age. Since university students start drinking at the age of 18 or 19, they should at least lower it so that people drinking underage would not feel guilty of what he or she is doing.
The rest answered that the government should not change the drinking age.

The last question was: Do you know any incidents or accidents concerning underage drinking?
Four people answered NO. For the remaining eight, this is what they commented:

・Sons of mine were arrested in USA for drinking in high school

・The Meiji tennis circle incident

・Underage person died by drinking too much

I learned that many of the people who answered my survey watched the news frequently.  Most of the news have some kind of relation with us, since high school and university students do not know the way to use alcohol correctly.

Thank you for answering!