The Legal Drinking Age: My arguments for both Military Service Personell vs. The Rest of Us

If we can die for our Country, we should be able to toast it as well. This first part of the argument for the legal drinking age applies only to our service Men and Women, Part II below, answers the reasons why the legal-drinking age should remain at 21 for the remainder of us:

For this author the answer to whether or not the United States should lower the drinking age has a pretty simple solution:

Either lower the drinking age or Raise the age American men and women can join [or be drafted] into the Armed Forces.

OR

Allow only those serving in the Military to have the right to a lower drinking age and not the remainder of our young people.

The sacrifices that we ask of our young people are not of the light variety. Indeed, many of our young Sons and Daughters feel a very strong desire to join up and we should all be grateful to them for that, but then to ask so much out of them and yet not allow them to drink is ridiculous.

Obviously, I have never served. Perhaps if I had, I would know that drinking alcohol for Soldiers is quite common and not something our Government frowns upon. I sincerely hope this is the case; at least for them in their off' time. Heaven forbid a Soldier goes out on patrol drunker than Cooter Brown!

Part II:
For the youth stateside, or what the military often refers to the rest of us in America, I do not feel the drinking age should be lowered for any reason. There are a number of reasons that I feel this way:

- Many times a young person's body is not up to the task; their weight ratio cannot handle the amount of alcohol they would like to consume which could ultimately lead to death. This can result in alcohol poisoning or other complications thereof

- Young people often lack the maturity required to know when enough is enough. Indeed, many people over the legal drinking age have the same problem, but we have laws to deal with these reckless individuals and due to the age of the offender, strict penalties as well

- Alcohol changes people; and without the full benefit of knowing yourself or your friends very well, it can be a difficult task to handle while under the influence of alcohol

The laws that led our Nation to raise the legal drinking age to 21 were put into place for some very good reasons. Since many of us were not on the spot to hear all of the arguments, it might help to know now what they were:

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