Picture with me for a moment, it is the night before one of the most life changing days of your life; tomorrow you will be an eighteen-year old. You are officially and legally an adult, which means you can now vote and let your voice be heard, and you may now lawfully sign a contract. You can buy a pack of cigarettes, get married, play the lottery, get a tattoo, and you can even enlist in the military and fight for your country. Despite the rights you get tomorrow when you turn eighteen, there is still one right you will have to wait for-- you will have to wait three more years before you can legally drink alcohol. And as an act of rebellion as most eighteen-year-olds do, you will probably find a way to get your hands on that liquid courage the first chance you get. The question remains, why does the government make you wait until you are twenty-one to consume alcohol, but will send you to the front lines of a war at eighteen?
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The arbitrary three-year wait for alcohol consumption has remained a controversial topic among outspoken advocates and critics since it was passed in 1984. That is right, if you can believe it; the current minimum legal drinking age law is just barely thirty years old. The legal drinking age should be lowered because the current law for the minimum drinking age has not been effective in preventing binge drinking, and there has been no substantiated evidence that the law has lowered drunk driving incidents.
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Advocates stand firm on the effectiveness of the law based on two statistics. First, since the law was passed, there have been approximately 1,000 lives saved annually, and second, that there has been an eighty-three percent decrease in drunk driving incidents involving a driver under the age of twenty-one (Mosey). The problem with these numbers is that the greatest decline is in the under twenty-one age group, but there has been a consistent drop in all age groups. There has also been an increase in overall safety regulations for cars that have helped with this number as well. Advocates also hold on to the science behind the brain’s continual “significant development in areas of the brain responsible for learning, memory, complex thinking, planning, inhibition and emotional regulation” (Mosey), which is prominent until the age of twenty-one. While these are valid reasons for keeping the drinking age at twenty-one, this has not prevented under age binge drinking.
Lowering the Minimum Legal Drinking Age:
Good Idea or Bad Idea?
The statistics seem to support the effectiveness of the current drinking age law. There has been a drop in drunk driving fatalities, “6,952 teenagers killed in 1984, [compared] to 2,524 in 2013” (Lessing). However, there has been a decline across the board for all ages thanks to public awareness campaigns for designated drivers and responsible drinking. This drop in underage drunk driving has had a negative result though, with an increase in underage binge drinking especially on college campuses (Gordon). As a twenty-seven-year-old, if I want to go to a bar and have a drink, a bartender can cut me off before I get too inebriated, but for eighteen to twenty-one year-olds they have to drink behind closed doors where there is no one monitoring how much they consume. The excessive binge drinking on college campuses is a serious problem that has minimum repercussions, and I feel this issue would be better resolved with a lower drinking age and a stricter policy in repercussions.
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Prevention of underage consumption of alcohol, especially on campus is vastly ineffective. Nowadays, beer and wine can both be purchased at most grocery stores. Any campus you go to, there is likely to be a college upperclassman willing to make that purchase for an underclassman. Having an environment where the vast majority of college students are not allowed to legally drink in public has caused them to seek unsupervised and questionably unsafe parties. “Ten million underage Americans openly flout the drinking age every month” (Lessing). The average penalty in most states for getting caught on campus drinking underage, is a fine around $250-$300, a thirty day suspension on your license, and a misdemeanor on your criminal record for five years (Lessing). This feels more like a slap on the wrist than a true punishment for breaking the law. If the law is going to remain, then the repercussions should be something that helps reinforce it.
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I think that most eighteen-year-olds are more mature then they are given credit for. They are told “they lack maturity and judgment [and yet] these same people can serve on juries and sign contracts” (Chafetz). Just like anything else in life, self control with alcohol consumption can be taught. Even if it is just beer and wine at eighteen, with access to harder liquor at twenty-one, that would be something I could agree with, and that may end up being the best compromise. As with any law, if it ends up making the problems worse, then we can change it again. The point being the conversation needs to be openly discussed, rather than being a taboo topic that people avoid. No progress can be made without open, honest and factual conversation.
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I understand that there has been some good from raising the minimum drinking age, but we are only one of four countries in the world with a drinking age this high. Many countries have a drinking age of seventeen or eighteen, if they have one at all; they have nowhere near the amount of drunk driving accidents (Richards). I feel a better solution is Americans learning how to moderate themselves, over the necessity to have such a high drinking age. Radley Balko states it perfectly, “It makes little sense that America considers an 18-year-old mature enough to marry, sign a contract, to vote and to fight and die for his country, but not mature enough to decide whether or not to have a beer.”
Sources
Balko, Radley. "Efforts to Lower the Drinking Age Have Both Supporters and Detractors." Should the Legal Drinking Age Be
Lowered?, edited by Stefan Kiesbye, Greenhaven Press, 2013. At Issue. Opposing Viewpoints in Context, ezp.tccd.edu/
loginurl=http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/EJ301052029/OVIC?u=txshracd2560&xid=309eaf80. Accessed 6 Nov.
2017. Originally published as "Back to 18?: A New Chorus of Critics Say It's Time to Lower the Drinking Age," Reason.com, 12 Apr. 2007.
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Chafetz, Morris E. "The Legal Drinking Age Does Not Prevent Teens from Drinking." Should the Legal Drinking Age Be Lowered?, edited by Stefan Kiesbye, Greenhaven Press, 2013. At Issue. Opposing Viewpoints in Context, ezp.tccd.edu/login?url=http:
//link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/EJ3010520223/OVIC?u=txshracd2560&xid=219ed65c. Accessed 6 Nov. 2017. Originally published as "The 21-Year-Old Drinking Age: I Voted for It; It Doesn't Work," Huffington Post, 18 Aug. 2009.
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Gordon, John Steele. "It’s Time to Do Away with the Minimum Drinking Age Act." Opposing Viewpoints Online Collection, Gale, 2017. Opposing Viewpoints in Context, ezp.tccd.edu/login?url=http://link.galegroup.com/app/doc/LVFQQQ352448880/
OVIC?u=txshracd2560&xid=af116316. Accessed 8 Nov. 2017. Originally published as "Repeal the Uniform Drinking Age Act," Commentary, 19 Jan. 2016.
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Lessing, Ryan. "The National Minimum Drinking Age Act Has Done Little to Prevent Underage Drinking." Opposing Viewpoints Online Collection, Gale, 2017. Opposing Viewpoints in Context, ezp.tccd.edu/loginurl=http://link.galegroup.com/apps/
doc/WVWQUF63693766 4/OVIC?u=txshracd2560&xid=a8e6ad29. Accessed 6 Nov. 2017. Originally published as "21 Has Gone Bust: Rethinking the Drinking Age," Brown Political Review, 25 Feb. 2015.
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Moyse, Misty, and Melanie Fonder. "The Drinking Age Should Not Be Lowered." Teen Drug Abuse, edited by David E. Nelson, Greenhaven Press, 2011. Opposing Viewpoints. Opposing Viewpoints in Context, ezp.tccd.edu/login?url=http://link.
galegroup.com/apps/doc/EJ3010436249/OVIC?u=txshracd2560&xid=9490099b. Accessed 6 Nov. 2017. Originally published as "Some University Presidents Shirk Responsibility to Protect Students Dangers of Underage Drinking,", 19 Aug. 2008
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Richards, John. "States Should Be Allowed to Experiment with the Legal Drinking Age." Should the Legal Drinking Age Be Lowered?, edited by Stefan Kiesbye, Greenhaven Press, 2013. At Issue. Opposing Viewpoints in Context, ezp.tccd.edu/
login? url=http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/EJ3010520228/OVIC?u=txshracd2560&xid=b335fe15. Accessed 6 Nov.
2017. Originally published as "Should We Consider Lowering the Drinking Age?", 19 Apr. 2011.