The United States has had many issues regarding drinking. Alcohol has been a major point of contention since Prohibition in the 1920s and 1930s. The legal drinking age has fluctuated between 18 and 21-years-old since then, and many people do not know which age is best. From the 1970s to 1984 the legal drinking age was 18, however, drunk driving fatalities began to increase and people sought to change the age. The change to 21 has caused several ramifications. For instance, there has been an increase in binge drinking and alcohol poisoning; these issues can lead to negative social changes involving the drinker, and possibly death. I believe that the drinking age should be lowered from 21 to 18-years-old to combat these issues. 

In 1984, President Ronald Reagan signed the Uniform Drinking Age Act, also known as the National Minimum Legal Drinking Age Act. This bill requires all states to maintain the legal drinking age at 21 or they will not receive federal highway funds (Introduction). The consensus behind the Uniform Drinking Age Act was to reduce car accidents that were leading to more teenage deaths than ever before. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimated that 900 lives per year were being saved due to the Uniform Drinking Age Act. This may be good but Congress and Mothers Against Drunk Driving (or MADD), who advocate for this bill, solely looked at drunk driving when they changed the age. They did not consider the many other implications raising the age would bring. 

Binge drinking and alcohol poisoning are some of these other implications. In a college setting, these acts are causing an increase in teenage deaths with each passing year. Many college students are still underage and are forced to undergo drinking in private and illegal ways. Underage college students are going underground and pre-gaming, the act of drinking alcohol before attending an event or social function. Students utilize the pre-game method because they are afraid of being caught and told to go home or possibly arrested. However, they continue to consume alcohol because college students believe they have a right as adults to drink and keep up with their already 21-year-old friends. It is fair for them to think this, given that 18-year-olds are subjected to huge responsibilities, such as serving our country or signing a contract, which equals adulthood in their eyes. 

 One argument for deciding which age is best is the factor that at 18 years old, these citizens are given the option to serve in the military. Chuck Crumbo writes for America's News and in his article "Lower drinking age for military," stating that if the individual is responsible enough to serve and die, then he or she is responsible enough to drink. He has been an advocate for lowering the drinking age for many years for this reason alone (Crumbo). When an 18-year-old signs up to join the army, they are told that they certainly could be injured or killed in the line of duty. This reflects that these 18-year-olds are able to understand what alcohol, or anything else thrown their way, can do to them and the effects it brings. Above all other 18-year-olds, an underage soldier matures faster and can decide what is best for himself (Crumbo). People can trust that a soldier would not put anyone in harm's way and drink and drive. 

The government allows 18-year-olds to sign contracts, to get married, to vote, and to buy cigarettes; what is stopping them from allowing 18-year-olds to drink? They are doing the same thing as all other adults. Signing a contract or getting married should not go unnoticed because these are life changing events. These are milestone marriages that people remember for the rest of their lives. Marriages are, more often than not, related to consuming plenty of alcohol, seen notably with a toast to the bride and groom. Moreover, if the bride and groom, who are the most important people of the whole event, cannot have a glass, then I find it irrational and awkward that everyone else can. When considering lowering the legal drinking age, it does not always have to be about the statistics. An emotional and human factor should be considered as well.

In the New York Times, Pam Belluck wrote an article that provided support that cigarettes can be more harmful than alcohol. Cigarettes can cause lung damage that often leads to chronic bronchitis, emphysema, and lung cancer. Even still, 18-year-olds have access to this substance at an early age. In Doctor Hanson's article, he concluded that there is no evidence that drinking in moderation at an early age causes excessive damage, especially to the brain (Hanson). In addition, Belluck explains that people have considered raising the cigarette-smoking age to 21 in order to make access to these substances at a fairer and evenhanded responsibility. However, the state that was considering doing this agreed that cigarettes would become a forbidden fruit. Cigarettes would see an increase in smoking from all ages between 18 and 21 (Belluck). Thus, someone can conclude that if a state can see that cigarettes are going to be in demand then we can see that the craving for alcohol has increased. Alcohol has become the forbidden fruit. Lowering the legal drinking age to 18 would lessen cravings for alcohol and stop people from thinking alcohol is something other than a forbidden fruit. Colleges would see fewer problems with alcohol because drinking would not have to be secret and thrilling. Instead, drinking would become controlled and supervised. Police officers, older friends, and family members could be there with these 18-year-olds and teach them about alcohol. Lowering the legal drinking age to 18 would make responsibilities more fair and alcohol less enticing.

At colleges and universities, it is given that underage students are going to drink. Drinking alcohol has become an expectation. From my experience, I can see that resident mentors almost expect freshman to drink in their dorms. These resident mentors, who govern what goes on at these dorms, have a routine of checking the hallways to make sure no alcohol can be seen but do not typically do anything if they find an intoxicated underage student. Also, at college held events, parents and alumni have a tendency to look the other way when it comes to underage students drinking because they too want to have fun. These predicaments are causing an increase in the abuse of alcohol among students. 

Another predicament that is causing an increase in the abuse of alcohol is that parents of today's college students also drank alcohol throughout college. The legal drinking age in the 1970s to 1984 was 18-years-old. For them, it was normal to drink. Mary Kate Cary wrote an article for U.S. News and World Report about how when she attended college, many years ago, alcohol was common at student gatherings. Police walked through parties and usually kept things under control (Cary). These stories would be talked about and told to their kids in the future, then the kids began to have their own expectation of going to college and drinking as their parents did. Underage students then learned quickly that alcohol and fake IDs are easy to obtain. College officials, such as campus police, expect underage students to drink which is why punishment for being caught with alcohol is much less harsh than any other substance. If a student is caught with a fake ID, normally used to get into bars, then the ID is just taken away. If the police show up at a college party with underage drinking, then everyone leaves. No names are taken down and no one is penalized because there are simply too many people. Colleges are not doing enough to enforce the legal drinking age. Everyone associated with college has it engrained in their minds already that the legal drinking age is 18 because authorities are doing little to prove otherwise.

Furthermore, Cary assessed that there was no need for pre-gaming. It was unheard of because students did not feel like they had to hit a certain level of intoxication before going out (Cary). Students, nowadays, are afraid that if they do not drink enough in the pre-game ritual, the rest of the night would no longer be as fun because it wasn't induced by alcohol. Conversely, these kids would drink excessively, but instead of being monitored, they would have no supervision. This is when binge drinking and alcohol poisoning began to see a sharp increase. 

Experimenting with alcohol should not have to be an expectation or a game to see who can have the most fun. If the legal drinking age was lowered to 18-years-old, drinking would not be an expectation, binge drinking and pre-gaming would be reduced, and alcohol poisoning could stop all together. Alcohol poisoning occurs if a student's reaches their limit and goes above and beyond it. In most cases the student dies because other students are afraid of calling an ambulance, in the chance of them getting in trouble. In Ruth Streeter's story on 60 Minutes, she interviews the parents of Gordie Bailey. Gordie died of alcohol poisoning in 2004 when he underwent fraternity initiation. He had 15 to 20 shots then entered a state of unconsciousness and was left to die on the fraternity's couch. Streeter asked Gordie's parents if "the age had been 18 instead of 21, would the kids have called for help?" Gordie's parents answered with a definite yes (Streeter). Lowering the drinking age could prevent several hundred teenage deaths caused by alcohol poisoning.  It is at this point that people have to decide if alcohol poisoning deaths are more important than drunk driving deaths.

In 1984, drunk driving deaths ultimately won out. It is true that traffic fatalities decreased about 33 percent after the age was raised to 21 but according to Michelle Minton, this statistic is not limited to just the United States. In Germany, fatalities caused by alcohol decreased by 57 percent between 1975 and 1990 (Minton). He states that this is result of greater law enforcement and better safety technologies, especially in cars. Examples of this technology are airbags and roll cages that help to protect anyone in a car crash. Additionally, in Friar Tamburello's piece, he expressed that an increase in the use of designated drivers has led to a decrease in fatalities for people under the age of 21 (Tamburello). Thus, the Mother Against Drunk Driving (MADD) cannot receive all the credit for the decreased figure. Their evidence is slowly deteriorating and soon the lowering the legal age to 18 will make impeccable sense. 

Moreover, teenagers can start to drive at the age of 15 and have a full license by 16. This shows that the government is giving kids full responsibility to handle these large vehicles before they even reach the age to vote or drink. In my opinion, driving can be more dangerous and frightening than alcohol. With one pull of the wheel, several people could be killed. A study done by Liz Kramer and Nancy Sprague concluded that since the law gives 16-year-olds the ability to drive, they gain enormous amounts of confidence in their driving abilities. By the time they are 18, these 16-year-olds overestimate how well they can drive and drink and drive (Kramer). In Anna Quindlen article "Teenage Driving Is as Dangerous as Teenage Drinking," she declares that in Europe, governments are tough on driving regulations and licensing provision and most have their driving age at 18. They believe driving is more dangerous than drinking. However, in the United States one-third of 16-year-olds drivers have been involved in serious accidents. Additionally, car crashes are the number 1 cause of death among 15 to 20-year-olds in the U.S. (Quindlen). It was suggested that the driving age be raised to 18 to help decrease this statistic, though many people did not appreciate the proposal. Parents and kids in high school complained that if the age was raised to 18, lives would be increasingly more difficult. Parents would hate to imagine having to drive their kids to college because their kid's birthday occurred later in the school year (Kramer). If the drinking age was lowered to 18, kids would still be confident in their driving abilities but then instead of sneaking around and trying to get home, they could call someone. Teenagers drink and drive because at some point they have to go home. By lowering the drinking age, additional responsibility would be added to these teenagers and force them to appreciate the effects of alcohol on various skills, like driving. 

Minton also discusses other countries around the world and how they deal with alcohol in his article, "The Legal Drinking Age Has Not Been Effective." In most European countries, the drinking age is lower than 21. In Italy, there is no restriction to who can drink alcohol (Minton). These children learn early about the consumption and consequences of alcohol. They enjoy it in an environment where it is welcoming and relaxed. Naturally, glasses of wine are an essential part of the meal in a wine country such as Italy. Europeans approach alcohol as if it is just another drink; their behaviors towards it makes alcohol less exhilarating and classier. Doctor David Hanson explained in his article, "Early Onset of Drinking and Later Problems," that groups such as Italians, Jews, and Greeks, drink quite often. That being said, Doctor Hanson described how they do not have as much problems as Americans. These groups teach young people early by setting good examples. Older adults set good examples by seeing alcohol as not an elixir or a passage to maturity but something they do in moderation or not at all (Hanson).  Alternatively, teenagers in America have to wait a considerable amount of time to drink which builds their desire for alcohol even more. When considering lowering the legal drinking age, people also have to understand that society as a whole must also change the way they behave towards it. Not only do teenagers have to learn how to handle themselves but older adults who are already allowed to drink. They too must show restraint and control in how they drink. 

The legal drinking age should be lowered from 21 to 18. It is not going to change any time soon but it can change. People, whether underage or not, have to push for changes by going to their senators and representatives and addressing the problems at hand. Colleges will continue to let alcohol go unchecked and students continue to get sick and potentially die from alcohol poisoning. People in America, of all ages, see alcohol as something they do not have to have control over. Unlike Europeans and various other cultures who practice moderation, Americans will let consumption of alcohol get out of hand if the age is not reduced and the way of thinking is not adjusted. Furthermore, the drunk driving statistic, that led the idea of changing the age in the first place, has been analyzed and concluded to the fact that only a small percentage has been a direct result of the higher age limit. The benefits far outweigh the detriments, and the United States will be better off for the foreseeable future because of it.

