双语调查：“合法饮酒年龄”应该是多少(图)

　　现在许多孩子初、高中就开始喝酒，这令家长们头痛不已。让我们看看美国是如何约束青少年饮酒的。他们的禁酒令有效吗？

　　At what age should people be allowed to start drinking alcohol? The debate on this subject died out in the U.S. in the 1980s, but now it's back--partly because of the Iraq War. If you are 18 years old, you are entitled to elect the president, you can become a soldier and die for your country, but you cannot buy a drink until you are 21. Does that make sense?

　　应该允许人们从多大开始饮酒呢？在美国，对这一问题的争论在20世纪80年代一度销声匿迹，但最近又卷土重来——其中一部分原因是

　　When Prohibition ended in 1933, the "drinking age"--the age at which one could legally buy and possess alcohol in public--was set at 21 in most states. Between 1970 and 1975, during the second half of the Vietnam War, many states decided to lower it to 18, 19 or 20.

　　1933年禁酒期结束后，大多数州都将“合法饮酒年龄”——你可以在公共场合购买或持有酒类饮料的最低年龄——定为21岁。1970年到1975年越南战争后期，许多州将该年龄降至18岁、19岁或20岁。

　　Then, in May 1980, Candy Lightner's 13-year-old daughter was killed by a drunk driver. Lightner started a national campaign called Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD). Although the driver who killed Lightner's daughter was in his 40s, one result of the group's work was that all 50 states passed the National Minimum Drinking Age Act in 1984, raising that age to 21. States can still set a lower drinking age, but at a price: they risk losing ten percent of the money the government gives them each year to build and service highways. So far, no state has changed its drinking age.

　　然而，随后，在1980年5月，坎迪•莱特纳13岁的女儿被一名酒后驾车者夺走了生命。于是，莱特纳发起成立了一个名为“反对酒后驾车母亲协会”的全国性组织。虽然夺走莱特纳女儿生命的司机已经年逾四十，该组织仍然取得了一项重大成果，那就是，推动全国50个州于1984年全部通过了《全国最低饮酒年龄法案》，该法案将合法饮酒年龄提高到了21岁。各州仍然可以将饮酒年龄设得更低，但这是要付出代价的：该州每年从联邦政府获得的高速公路建设保养费可能会被削减10%。到目前为止，还没有一个州改变过饮酒年龄限制。