Drinking at 18?

When you turn 18; you're allowed to vote, you're allowed to smoke cigarettes, you can serve on juries, you can get married, you can be prosecuted as an adult, and you can join the military. Though you can't go to a bar and order yourself a nice cold one after a long day or to hangout with friends or watch a game. When you turn 18 this is supposed to be the age when you become an adult and start making decisions for yourself, but apparently not decisions about drinking. 

Shortly after prohibition most of the states established their minimum legal drinking age as 21. Since then there has been debate about lowering the drinking age. In the 1970's we saw a number of states actually lower their age, even if the majority of them eventually ended up raising them back.  For a better understanding of the history of the drinking age check out The Week.

 The main reason for the drinking age being restored back to 21 were the results of several studies showing that the number of motor vehicle accidents among teens increased significantly with a lower minimum legal drinking age. The American Medical Association says that the 21 legal drinking age saves more than 1,000 teen lives a year. 

Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) is an advocacy group trying to stop drunk driving and as you can imagine supports having 21 as the minimum legal drinking age. MADD explains that teens react to alcohol differently than adults and "naturally overdo it." They claim that more than 25,000 lives have been saved due to minimum legal drinking age of 21. On the MADD site you can find out more about their support of 21 as the minimum legal drinking age.

The Students for Sensible Drug Policy (SSDP) though says that the 21 year-old minimum legal drinking age doesn't stop teens from drinking and claims that more than 90% of high school seniors find it fairly easy to obtain alcohol. The SSDP claims that teens could benefit and learn to be more responsible drinkers with a lower drinking age. Teens that drink underage are usually drinking in unsafe environments, like the kid's house with the out of town parents. The SSDP says that with a lower drinking age kids won't have to hide their drinking and could be supervised and therefor learn to be more responsible. They also suggest classes in school teaching students to drink responsibly rather than teaching them to not drink at all.

Mac McCann of The Daily Texan wrote an article on why the drinking age should be lowered to 18. In it he claims that with the legal drinking age being 21 we are trying to enforce a law that is unenforceable. He says that regardless of the age, teens are still drinking and all the law is doing is punishing young adults. He believes law enforcement time and money should be spent more on cracking down on abuse and DUI rather than trying to catch a bunch of kids for drinking underage.

Regardless of your opinion on the topic there are many pros and cons to lowering the drinking age. If you are looking to learn more about the drinking age debate check out Drinking Age ProCon for a good list of pros and cons of lowering the drinking age.