Should the national drinking age be lowered to 18?

by Austin Temple

Created on: July 03, 2009   Last Updated: July 08, 2009

If we're going to ask if the drinking age should be lowered from 21 to 18 years of age, we must first understand WHY the drinking age is at 21 currently. The answer may surprise you. In 1984, the National Minimum Drinking Age Act didn't exactly require states to raise the drinking age, but rather they were forced. Any state refusing to raise their drinking age to 21 faced a 10% reduction in highway funds under the Federal Highway Aid Act. No state could afford such a loss to their highway budgets, as most actually needed more money to operate as they wished to.

The Amethyst Initiative is a strong voice in lowering the drinking age to 18. Made up of 144 college Chancellors and Presidents, the group claims (truthfully) that the current legal drinking age of 21 is useless, as college campuses nationwide continue to show an increasing pattern in binge drinking not only underage students, but those of legal age.

Okay, now that the legal stuff is out of the way- it's time for some opinionated blogging. With the drinking age at 21, drinking alcohol becomes more of a 'taboo' than other things. Setting drinking on a pedestool like that makes people, especially ages 18-20, feel like they are missing out on something, and they may be right. They can buy cigarettes, get married, are considered legal citizens, and can even volunteer to serve and die for our country- but they can't purchase alcohol because the President of the United States had a vendetta against it way back in 1984, and tied in a drinking age increase with a Highway Act.

We hear it all the time, "I'm 18 and legal, why shouldn't I be able to drink?" The most common argument against this is either "Because you're not mature" or even "Because you're body is still growing." However, even the illegality of drinking underage and being told those reasons HAS NOT STOPPED underage consumption in the United States.

So, why would lowering the drinking age from 21 to 18 be beneficial? For a multitude of reasons. First of all, we are removing the 'taboo' that has been placed on drinking. Think about marijuana. The allure of it is it's illegality in a lot of cases, it's the same with drinking. The feel of rebelliousness or feeling older, especially in college situations, causes much of the underage drinking we see. By removing the 'taboo' we have placed, we make alcohol more commonplace, which would lower the amount of binge drinking we see. In other countries with lower drinking ages, we don't see nearly as much of a problem with binge drinking, because children grow up with it, and understand it much better than we Americans do.

Another benefit of lowering the drinking age would be the reduced cost for law-enforcement. It's simple, less people in jail for underage consumption would lead to lower court and prison costs, and possibly lower taxes because of that. Not to mention DUIs would decrease for the same reasons stated for binge drinking.

The drinking age was 18 until 1984, and since then we have seen a great increase in problems involving alcohol in our society. For the reasons stated above, we should support the Amethyst Initiative, and get the drinking age back to 18, where it belongs.

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