Hey 2p2 people, first time posted long time reader here. Well for my college speech class we have to give a persuasive speech about a certain topic and I thought lowering the gambling age to 18 would be appropriate. Well, that or the good old "Is Poker Gambling?". But definitely going with lowering the gambling age as that would most likely be more easy to persuade as many people refuse to believe that poker is a skill based game.

Anyway, anyone want to help!

I read something someone said that I think will be pretty persuasive.

You can enter a war at 18 years old and gamble your life, but you cant gamble some money?

Will appreciate anything really :P

Thank!

Look into Minnesota gambling laws. The gambling age here is 18 for most casinos. I've been to quite a few here in MN, and have only seen one that was 21+.

I'm Canadian and the legal gambling age here is 19 for most provinces and 18 for Quebec and Alberta (same with drinking). You could probably find stats and arguments made for the lower gambling age in Canada that you could use in your speech. Don't go with "Is Poker Gambling?" 1. Don't teach fish. 2. No one would follow the poker theory you bring up.

Gambling isn't as huge up here. We don't have a city like Vegas. I'm in Montreal and there's 1, ONE casino in Montreal, 4 in Quebec. British Columbia probably have about 2 dozen casinos. The one here in Montreal is mostly slots. The stats are something like 4000 slot machines, 15-20 poker tables, no limit Texas Hold'em only, we don't get Omaha or Stud here, less than 30 blackjack tables, and I'm not certain about roulette, craps, and other table games. It's a new and expensive casino. New as in it's about 15 or 16 years old and expensive as in the lowest limit blackjack is 15 dollars per bet.

The 2 main ones in British Columbia, Edgewater and Riverrock have lower limits for table games (5 dollar blackjack). Riverrock hosted the Canadian Poker Tour and some other televised tourneys so I'd assume their poker room is decent. My friend is a VIP at Edgewater (cuz his mom's a VIP) and he's a fan of their poker room too. I have not been to either casinos in BC since the legal age is 19 and I'm only 18.

Not sure how much this would help you.

if you didn't know the UK has gambling(and drinking) age of 18, there has been a lot of discussion about it in the last few years as gambling has become more popular, i barely play table games but i am in various casinos across the country on a regular basis and i see a lot of 18-21 year olds playing low limit table games, especially roulette where minimum bet is normally 50p or around 85c. i dont see this as a bad thing and being 20 i know a lot of people in this group and cant really think of anyone i know who has a problem, a night out in a casino is fun for a lot of people aged 18-21 and doesn't present any risks.

Choose a different topic. I am pretty sure you will not get an A no matter how good your speech is. People simply refuse to understand why poker is not 100% gambling. Your teacher will just view you as another degenerate gambler.

you should be able to be a toddler sitting in your superman pj's at a home game playing for a 100k's large tbh

i think in the us most gambling restrictions are based on the drinking age (ie casinos serving drinks), not on the gambling age, so gambling arguments may not be that relevant.

In that case, lower the legal drinking age too. 21 is ridiculous. You should be able to vote, drink, and gamble at the same age. I'd actually argue lowering the drinking age to 15 or 16 but that's a whole other debate.

Restaurants serve alcoholic drinks, should you need to be 21 to go into one? No, that's ridiculous.

Now I'm 18 in the US so I haven't been in a casino here, but I'm sure they check your ID. They could simply implement something to distinguish who's underage and who's not. Such as a bracelet like they use in hospitals, or w/e is better.

lol you never get IDed at the bar in the casino.

how about get rid of the gambling age and let the casinos set the limits?

I agree that it would make more sense to have a standard age of consent for everything (gambling, marriage, whatever).

I live in the state of Michigan (US) and they have one of the wierdest age-of-consent screw-ups that I have every seen. The age of sexual consent in Michigan is 16. So, age 15 is "jailbait", age 16 is not. Pretty simple right?

But wait--the online age of consent is 18. Yes, you read that right. You can take a 16-year-old to a motel and that's fine. But if you get online and ask a 17-year-old to meet you at a motel, that is illegal "solictation", and whether or not any sex actually happens, that act of solicitation is, under Michigan law, criminal sexual conduct.

Wow, that is really weird.

But about the gambling and drinking thing. I find it very illogical that you can join the army, serve in a foreign country, sleep in rain, crawl through mud, suffer through heat, get shot at, take a bullet and when you come home, you can't legally order yourself a beer or hit up the casino with your friends.

Lower the legal gambling age could produce an influx of fish into the low limit live games which is +EV for low limit regs. Then again, I've been told by some of my friends from the States that they're much more conservative than Canada and that anything taboo is hard to get laws in favour for.

I'm going on a tangent here but alcohol age should be lowered to 15 or 16. Reason: they're doing it anyways. Better reason: 15 or 16 year old kids are still living at home. Their parents can educate them on proper alcohol consumption before they leave home, go to college and realize drinking until you wake up in a hospital is fun.

grunching: gambling age is 18. most casinos serve alcohol without checking ids, so they want everyone in there to be 21.

hey frank, go write your fkn congressman or something. in some states it is legal to drink with your parents at home, in some states it isnt. i dont know, like your whole post has been discussed over and over and over again in many many different places.

Nah, no need. I'm a Canadian. I'm 18 and I get to drink and gamble all I want.

Edit: Writing your congressman won't do **** anyways.

Hey guys, thanks for the input. My presentation is in 3 hours and I am litereally just starting to work on it until class starts. So any more input on the topic would be amazing. I somehow need to find 4 legit sources (like .gov, edu, etc) about my argument which ive realized is going to be mad hard since I have to talk for 8 minutes or something. Going to be fun. Thanks 2p2 community!

I know most of the kids on here are too young to know this,

but many States used to have the drinking age as 18. Then around the 80s the Federal Government started a campaign to raise it to 21. Most states refused, then the government said, "Well, if you don't raise it, then we won't give you federal funds for roads"

and within two years, all the states raised it to 21.

Now, the reason why you have to be 21 to gamble is DUE TO THE LAWS RELATED TO ALCOHOLIC CONSUMPTION.

But wait? Don't restaurants serve alcohol to? Why don't you have to be 21 to enter a restaurant.

The law considers a restaurant a different venue than a bar, nightclub, casino or any other 'sinful' place.

The reason why 21 is the drinking age is because the 18 - 20yr old demographic is the weakest voting demographic. 18 - 20yr olds do not have any political clout. Biggest reason is that if they were to band together, by the time they got anything done, they'd already be 21 and by then why should they care, its not their problem anymore.

That is why 18 - 20yr olds get the shtt end of the stick in many things. In the end, everything boils down to politics and 18-20 yr olds have no political power.

Conversely, the opposite end of the spectrum, elderly people, have a shtt load of political power for the exact opposite reasons why 18-20 yr olds don't.

So, if you are going to argue the issue, its best to understand the real reasons why and not the red herrings of "well it doesn't make sense"

Becuase in actuality, it does make sense. 18-20 yr olds are weak politically, so you get the shtt end of the stick. Very simple.

As someone both born and raised in a gambling town & having spent years in the army: It's not a question of what they might deserve, it's a matter of the risks associated with lowering the drinking and gambling ages (if anything it would probably make more sense to raise the enlistment age). The age limits are pretty arbitrary, but being 21 to gamble or drink doesn't seem that big a deal. Not like you can't do both easily enough if you have some friends, you just can't do it in a casino.

And they're not getting the **** end of anything. The maturity level in many 18 year olds tends to be pretty awful, and since the laws can't really hand pick them so they make the age same for everyone.

I think your reasoning is completely backwards. Alcohol and gambling are big business, and have considerable lobbying power, much like the cigarette industry. It's the public's opposition to lowering these age requirements that keeps them high, because otherwise they'd probably be 18 across the board everywhere.

As far as your other point, the single biggest reason the young demographic has no political clout is because they can't be bothered to vote.

With all due respect, you're off on this topic. Majority of the public as indicated by various polls has ALWAYS felt that the drinking age should be 18.

Also, gambling DOES NOT have considerable lobbying power as evident by the anti-online gambling legislation in the US and that in MOST states casinos are illegal and establishments have to use back door legal loopholes (Indian reservations and riverboats) to skirt around the law and even with that, states still make casinos illegal in many cases.

This was exactly my point. And the reason why it will NEVER gain momentum is because teens only need to wait 3 years until they turn 21. Also, its not like you can't get a fake idea and or someone older to buy your booze.

Lastly, with groups like MAAD out there, you will never get the drinking age lowered. It is just too much trouble to get a bill passed, let alone a law repealed. So 18 - 21yr olds are just screwed. Sorry, but that is the way it is.

If they had the political clout, things would be different, but they don't. And that is the reason why they get the shtt end of the stick IMO.