by Author Name Withheld 145

Created on: September 03, 2008

Here in America, there is an interesting demographic slice of the melting pot pie (potpie = delicious) of children between the ages of 18 and 21. By many counts, they are adults. They can vote, smoke, and enlist in the military (unless they're gay; then they have to wait until they turn straight-years-old). But they still can't gamble, drink alcohol, or rent a car.

Because of this, 100 college presidents from around the country have proposed the idea of lowering the legal drinking age from 21 to 18. This will better define that transition into adulthood, and protect colleges from any possible liability.

This is smart thinking by the universities. The best way to fix a nationwide epidemic of alcohol poisoning, binge drinking, death, and disease is to make it legal. By simply getting rid of the law, under-age drinking would no longer exist. Eighteen-year-olds would no longer be under age, so it would just be called "drinking" which everyone is okay with.

Everyone except for parents, that is.

The outcry from those who "don't remember what it's like to be young!" (a.k.a. "you're-so-lame!"-ites) is that by lowering the drinking age, irresponsible young adults will drink, maybe even drive, and maybe even get embarrassing pictures of them posted on the facebook.com which no one is okay with.

But even more dangerous is the possibility that if the drinking age were lowered to 18, parents would have no one to blame but themselves (or scapegoat their genes) if their kid turns out to be a raging alcoholic in college. With the drinking age at 21, there's currently a three-year buffer for parents to not be accountable for their children's drinking. It becomes the colleges' fault for not constantly supervising the activities of thousands of students every evening and weekend. It's not like the people who brought them into existence and were supposed to teach them how to be smart, responsible, law-abiding citizens can do anything about it. They're back at home, miles away. The cords on their home phones don't reach that far.

That's why lowering the drinking age would put undue burdens on parents. Parents would have to raise their children in such a way that if they chose to drink, they would do so responsibly. This would most likely require parents to, first of all, set a good example and, secondly, not supply the alcohol at the kids' high school parties. Changing the drinking age to 18 might even force parents to be more involved in their children's lives they would have to know where their kids were, what they were doing, and who they were doing it with.

But parents just don't have time for any of that anymore. They have neighbors to compete with and spin classes to go to. They can't be expected to teach their children to obey the law and be responsible adults. That's what school, church and government are for anyway.
So the drinking age needs to stay at 21. Heck, bump it up to 25. That way, on their 25th birthday they can rent a car and drive it around completely inebriated.
It's the American way.

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