The legal drinking age has been a very popular debate topic ever since it was raised to 21 by the MLDA (Minimum Legal Drinking Age) act of 1984. The major question at hand in this debate has been "Should the Legal Drinking Age Be Lowered?", which has sparked many different arguments for and against the legal drinking age. This debate has been a major issue for the past several years because of many different factors including: Binge drinking, heavy usage on college campuses, alcohol poisoning deaths, moral views and several more. All of these factors are each major in their own way, there are also factors that are beneficial from the legal drinking age being at 21 but the negatives outweigh the positives. By lowering the drinking age to 18, there will be a great reduction in binge drinking and alcohol poisoning deaths on college campuses, however, there should be programs in place to teach young teens how to handle alcohol responsibly. 

There are a lot of people who oppose the legal drinking age being lowered and make strong debates as to why they oppose it. One of the major claims as to why the drinking age should not be lowered is because it would affect different laws and legislations. Scholar, Drew Saylor, claims that there would be a ripple effect since the MLDA is "part of a set of drinking laws that work in conjunction" (Saylor). Although there are laws that would be affected by this change, they could eventually be adjusted over time to where there is a balance between these laws and the legal drinking age. He also claims the MLDA 21 is "the most successful underage drinking law" (Saylor), which has proven to have a lot of positive effects but a MLDA of 18 would prove to be an even greater one.

Another opposing viewpoint against this topic is from a neurological standpoint, that lowering the drinking age would cause harm to brain development. The human brain isn't fully developed until later in adulthood, "From this neurological perspective, emerging studies have shown that the brain continues to develop into adulthood." (Jones) which means constant consumption of alcohol could affect a minor's brain development and cause harm. A whole three years' difference would not cause harm on brain development, young minors are already drinking illegally and if anything, harm on brain development would decrease because there would be less heavy consumption and if minors are educated on how to be alcohol responsible they will know how to not abuse alcohol.

One major point among the opposing side's debate is that traffic deaths would not decrease. This is probably true; traffic deaths would either remain the same or increase. If the MLDA is lowered to 18 then minors can be educated on how to not drink and drive. There are also laws that scare people enough not to drink. Minors could also learn about not drinking and driving through DUI programs that teach people how to not drink and drive.

People need to start understanding how harmful heavy consumption of alcohol really is. There are a ton of smoking ads on television or on billboards informing people about how bad smoking is for your body, but why are there no alcohol ads? Alcohol is a major factor in deaths just as much as smoking is, "Alcohol consumption is the third leading actual cause of death in the United States, a major contributing factor to unintentional injuries, the leading cause of death for youths and young adults, and accounts for an estimated 75,000 or more total deaths in the United States annually" (Weschler). People are not being informed as much about alcohol deaths as they are smoking. It is proven that the amount of smokers (especially young adults) as an overall whole have decreased over the years. Our society needs to start taking action against heavy alcohol consumption and can take a major step forward by lowering the MLDA to 18.

There are many positives that would come from lowering the MLDA to 18. The first major positive would be a reduction in the amount of binge drinking. Binge drinking is an excessive consumption of alcohol in a short period of time. There are consequences of excessive binge drinking, "Long-term neurobiological consequences of heavy alcohol consumption have been well characterized in adult cohorts, demonstrating deficits across several domains of human cognition" (Silveri). Binge drinking has become a severe problem across college campuses, students are getting control of alcohol and drinking it all at once and it needs to end.

Another positive that would come from a lower MLDA is a reduce in the amount of alcohol poisoning deaths among college students. Alcohol Poisoning is when so much alcohol has been consumed in a short span on time that it causes severe harm to a person's body and can put someone's life at risk. These deaths have been increasing over time, "between 1998 and 2005, the number of cases of alcohol poisoning deaths among 18- to 24-year-olds nearly tripled, jumping from 779 cases to 2,290" (Glaser) showing that the current drinking age of 21 is not helping to prevent these deaths but instead doing the opposite. 

Alcohol poisoning deaths would also decrease because people will become safer when handling a situation where someone is at risk. There was a 60 minutes' episode that talks about a case involving a young man named Gordy who died from alcohol poisoning. Gordy was a pledge for a fraternity and part of his hazing ritual was for all the pledges to drink "10 gallons of alcohol and wine" (Streeter), after the initiation was over Gordy was completely incapacitated "His eyes were rolled in the back of his head and he couldn't walk" (Streeter). Gordy would lay in the fraternity house all night until an ambulance was called in the morning only to find that Gordy had died overnight. This story becomes relevant because what if the MLDA was 18 when this happened? Maybe the other fraternity members wouldn't have hesitated to call 911 because they would not be in trouble since Gordy was of legal age. Or maybe the initiation would have never taken place because drinking alcohol would not be such a "daredevil" thing to do. 

Another reason why the MLDA should be lowered to 18 is simply because to most people it's morally right. There is no reason why when young adults turn 18 years of age and are allowed to have all the freedom of becoming an adult. When you turn 18 you are: able to join the military, able to vote, treated as an adult in the justice system, allowed to get married, allowed to play the lottery, allowed to serve jury duty, buy tobacco products, no longer considered a minor among many other things. So why is it when someone turns 18 they are granted every single right of becoming an adult except one, alcohol. People are still being treated as kids when it comes to alcohol, well when someone turns 18 and feels as if they are a grown adult they are going to find a way to drink alcohol whether it be illegal or not. People who turn 18 are allowed to buy tobacco products which are equally as harmful to the body as alcohol, so why not allow them to drink alcohol? It isn't morally right to call someone an adult and give them all the privileges of being an adult, but instead making them wait even longer for one because they "simply aren't ready to handle it". 

One main issue of heavy alcohol consumption on college campuses is fraternities and sororities having major initiation issues when it comes to consumption. When kids come to college, many of them wish to join a fraternity or sorority. Well, in order for this to happen, many times they need to go through an initiation that a lot of the times involves alcohol. The pledges have no control over this, "Greek leaders have more extreme alcohol-related attitudes and behaviors than other members." (Fairlie). Since pledges have no control over their initiation they just do whatever the leaders tell them to in order to become a part of their organization. This leads to many cases of pledges binge drinking or alcohol poisoning. There are many different cases that involve pledges dying from hazing rituals. If the MLDA were 18, the rituals would still probably be similar, but the overall consumption at these initiations would decrease due to all the pledges already being legally allowed to drink. 

The MLDA needs to be lowered to 18 because Universities can't control who is drinking illegally and who is not. This is unfair to the Universities, "having a drinking age of 21 has put colleges and universities in the difficult position of having to police a population of drinkers, half of whom are legally permitted to drink, and half of whom are not." (Steinberg) this quote says it perfectly, how can you be in a living environment where half the people there are legally allowed to drink alcohol and half are not. Putting minors in this situation just helps encourage their consumption because since they are not allowed to drink they can easily just ask a friend who is of legal age to buy it for them, it also affects those who are of legal age because they can be affected if their 20-year-old friend gets caught drinking, which can put them at great risk of suspension/expulsion. Having half legal age students and half not also encourages minors to carry fake id's. Students will carry a fake id in order to gain alcohol access and the crazy thing is it works! Students are still being allowed in bars and to purchase alcohol, "17.5 percent of consumer spending for alcohol" (Tracy) is the amount of people under age 21 who purchase alcohol, but how are they being allowed to purchase alcohol if they are not of legal age? The students are going to find anyway possible to consume alcohol, even if that means breaking the law. If everyone in college was legally allowed to drink, this problem would no longer occur, people would no longer carry fake id's around campus. Instead, they should be taught how to handle their alcohol in a mature way so they do not run the risk of severe harm to their body.

If the MLDA were to be lowered to 18, then alcohol education needs to become a major factor in teaching young adults how to handle alcohol responsibly. Alcohol education should start being taught at a younger age and should be taught as a major subject instead of a week or so in school where you learn about how bad alcohol is and are just told "don't do it, it is bad for you". Alcohol education should not be like the one here at USC, that put you through these random scenarios and asked "what would you do in this situation?", the Alcohol Edu tutorial only took about one hour and students were just trying to finish it instead of paying attention. Why is it that students would just brush off this tutorial and not care to learn anything it taught them? One major factor is that students already have a mindset from previous year of "Alcohol is not that bad and they plan on drinking it college because it is the social norm". Students are not educated for a long enough period as children and therefore the information is not being stored. Alcohol education systems should be modeled after a system that is already proven to work, such as secondhand smoke. Secondhand smoke campaigns have proven effective, 

That secondhand alcohol strategies may be effective in reducing alcohol abuse on campus is suggested by the success of analogous secondhand smoke campaigns as well as by the efforts of organizations such as Mothers Against Drunk Driving that have greatly influenced public perceptions regarding the acceptability of certain inebriated behaviors that threaten others. (Misch)

they have led to a great decrease in overall tobacco use and have led to people becoming more fearful of smoking and alcohol could take a page out of their paper to help reduce alcohol consumption.

Lowering the drinking age will be no easy task, in fact it will take a great social movement to make sure it is effective. In order for lowering the drinking age to be effective, we must have a great effort from people in implementing alcohol education programs and we need people to socially accept that drinking alcohol is not a normal thing to do and it is in fact harmful. In order to "restore sanity to teenage drinking" (Tucker) there has to be a full effort to stop heavy consumption because we can't just give people this privilege and expect it to change itself.

In conclusion, the debate on the legal drinking age is a major topic in todays society. The MLDA should be lowered back to 18 in the coming future, if the MLDA is lowered it will bring many positive changes. Binge drinking and alcohol poisoning deaths on college campuses will see great reductions and overall consumption on college campuses will decrease. Although there are a couple of negatives that would come with lowering the MLDA, there would be more positives that would outweigh them. Alcohol education will need to become a major factor in society in order for young adults to understand how to properly be responsible when handling alcohol. There will also need to be a great social movement in people wanting to educate the youth, and for young adults to understand that they don't have to drink alcohol in order to be socially acceptable.

