
As a major part of social interaction, alcohol consumption has become a major part of American culture. With around 86.8 percent of people consuming during their lifetime, usage of alcohol is not a rare event for many Americans (NIH.). However, with the right to purchase and consume strictly set at the age of twenty-one within the United States, many young adults attempt to get around the restriction with negative outcomes. Due to increased consequences if a minor is caught under the influence or in possession, binge drinking and underground activities have taken a rise in college aged students, creating an unenforceable law and environments that lead to incredibly dangerous situations. Ultimately, in order to reflect the growing responsibilities young adults are given in the United States and around the world, to reduce the production of fake identification, bring dangerous binge drinking activities to a halt and partying into a supervised environment, the drinking age should be lowered in the United States to eighteen with mandatory alcohol education courses, and a license to drink program. With the alcohol education courses and a license to drink program we are educating the younger population on the risks of drinking and how to consume safely while instilling a consideration for the effects consumption may have on one's self and others. Furthermore, when in a controlled environment, alcohol is an enjoyable social activity that cannot be stopped, only hidden in college.

In American society, alcohol has always played a large role in social interaction, even during the periods in which it was illegal on United States soil. As history goes to show in the past, even bans against alcohol did nothing stop people from drinking, but instead created more secretive and thus dangerous environments, reflecting the current situation with teenage drinkers in America. Starting in 1919, the 18th Amendment was created banning the sale, manufacture and distribution of liquor beginning a thirteen-year period known as Prohibition. It was believed that the ban would " ... lower crime rates, strengthen families, and generally improve the national character ... " ("Prohibition"), however, it resulted in the loss of almost one thousand lives per year due to underground consumption of tainted liquors. Instead of a reduction of alcohol consumption in this period, usage of alcohol went through the roof, increasing to between sixty or seventy percent higher than before the prohibition age (Miron, Zwiebel 2). Essentially prohibition did nothing except push activity underground and publicly ban alcohol, creating more problems than before. 

In 1933 however, prohibition ended as it had gradually lost support, cost billions and failed to enforce its original purpose (History.com Staff). After the failure of prohibition, for the next fifty years various states set different drinking ages ranging from eighteen to twenty-one leading to the establishment of our current national drinking age. It was not until the 1980's that Congress would then pass the National Minimum Drinking Age Act with help from the organization Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) encouraging that states set a minimum drinking age at twenty-one as a solution to lowering the amount of traffic fatalities on the highways as a result of alcohol usage in young adults (Choose Responsibility). If states failed to comply with the National Minimum Drinking Act, Congress threatened to take away necessary highway funding for states unless they adopted a minimum drinking age of twenty-one (Gonchar). By 1987 this led to a country wide ban on alcohol usage for citizens under the age of twenty-one and has been unchanged since. 

Most college freshmen start school around the age of eighteen or nineteen and are given almost the same freedom and responsibility of their elders. However when it comes to alcohol consumption, that freedom and sense of trust in sensible decision-making is denied, even though in the eyes of the law the eighteenth birthday marks a stage of adulthood. If a young adult is allowed to knowingly take out thousands of dollars worth of loans, and move across the United States for college why is it that their decision regarding safe alcohol consumption is even questioned. Furthermore, at the age of eighteen, ones decision making is developed to the point where enlisting in the military, and voting for the leaders of our country is legal, encouraged and not questioned, however the simple act of drinking a beer could result in fines, a mark on ones record or even jail time that could cause damage to future career opportunities. Camille Paglia wrote in a recent Time magazine article, "It is absurd and unjust that young Americans can vote, marry, enter contracts and serve in the military at 18 but cannot buy an alcoholic drink in a bar or restaurant." Why is it that suddenly the judgment of a young adult is questioned when alcohol is concerned, however their judgment is held to the same standards as other adults if a serious crime were to be committed. Ultimately, a lowered drinking age would make sense in the United States to reflect the other responsibilities and weight we give our young adults when it comes to decision making.

A heightened drinking age does pose a serious threat to college students as well as most of society. Much like during the prohibition era of the 1920's, laws do little to stop the use of alcohol, only push the usage further underground and glamorize the thrill of breaking the law. It is with this underground usage that incredibly dangerous situations arise, oftentimes with no help to go to if things go terribly wrong.  In 2008 this idea was agreed upon by over one hundred college presidents, writing, "'Twenty-one is not working ... A culture of dangerous, clandestine 'binge-drinking' -- often conducted off-campus -- has developed.'" (qtd. in Curtis). Ultimately, instead of reducing underage drinking, the crackdown on consumption has further pushed activity by minors underground, and off campus, creating more opportunities for things to go wrong and people to get hurt. From this trend, binge drinking in college students has become increasingly popular leading to serious situations with no one to turn to out of fear. The negative effects of this underground drinking is seen all across the country, from the death Charles Terreni Jr. a student at the University of South Carolina who passed away at a house party in March of 2015, to more publicly, Gordie Bailey a fraternity pledge at the University of Colorado Boulder (CBS NEWS; Ellis). In the case of Gordie Bailey, he was left to die in his fraternity house due to his peers being to afraid to call for help after he consumed fifteen to twenty shots of alcohol and became incapacitated (CBS NEWS). For nine hours, Gordie Bailey suffered from alcohol poising until he passed away, and had his friends sought help earlier it is believed by medical officials he would be alive today (CBS NEWS). 

Furthermore, if the minimum age of alcohol consumption were lowered to fit college aged students, less underground drinking would take place and binge drinking would be less prominent on college campuses. This would allow parties to be held in a more controlled manner rather than tucked away behind blackout curtains in a dorm room or fraternity house. This means that students like Gordie Bailey and Charles Terreni Jr. would no longer be left to die on couches and bathroom floors surrounded by terrified peers, but rather sent to the hospital for expert medical help because current minors would no longer be concerned for their own wellbeing in the eyes of the law and drinking would be less likely to reach fatal limits. While Medical Amnesty or the '911 Good Samaritan Law' helps to combat the problem of minors not calling in overly intoxicated people due to fear by giving both parties amnesty (the intoxicated and the caller), it is only available in thirty-one states and does nothing to prevent minors from getting to the severe point of intoxication, but only attempts to fix the damage once it has been done (Medical Amnesty Initiative). Ideally, if the drinking age were lowered, binge drinking would be seen less, resulting in fewer deaths and for those instances of binge drinking, help would be sought after more regularly for the incapacitated. 

Continuing the trend of reducing dangerous activity, as a country if we were to lower the drinking age, we would be looking at less fake identification ownership. Having various forms of identification floating around is not only a serious safety issue but also a security issue. As far as security is concerned, having people running wild with identification that is false or not even their own poses risks when looking at what the identification might be used for when it is utilized for other reasons than purchasing alcohol. In a 1996 study of two hundred and seventy-two college students by K F Durkin, T W Wolfe, and D W Phillips III, it was noted that 46% of students reported ownership or use of fake identification for the intention of consuming alcohol. It is important to note that this rate of 46% has more than likely increased with better technology and time. When considering usage of ulterior identification, "ownership of fake IDs by underage college students is a significant public health problem in that ... ownership is highly prevalent in college and meaningfully predicts heavy drinking" (Martinez, Rutledge, and Sher). If the drinking age were lowered, it would mean a drop in the production of fake identification as the market to buy and the need to own or borrow fake identification would no longer be present and would in turn help bring down the glamorization and thrill of taking a risk and breaking the law in order to consume alcohol. 

If we began to lower the age of consumption we would also be looking at a major drop in the trend of binge drinking that is popular among college students. Part of the reason binge drinking is so prevalent is the idea that alcohol is short in quantity and must be consumed rapidly before it runs out or the illegal act of consumption becomes discovered. Also, in order to stay drunk, many college students consume a maximum amount of alcohol before leaving to go to events or areas where underage drinking will be shut down. Dwight B. Heath, an author and professor who has written hundreds of works on cultural attitudes towards alcohol states that, '"Alcohol has no mystique. It's no big deal. By contrast, where it's banned until age 21, there's something of the 'forbidden fruit' syndrome."' (qtd. in Griggs). This forbidden fruit syndrome is one of the root causes of current minors abusing alcohol. Essentially, illegal consumption is glamorized as it is highly illegal, and the idea that the illegal consumption may be discovered makes it necessary in the eyes of minors to consume as much as possible as quickly as possible. With anything, if you tell a large group of people that they are not allowed to do something, that activity is then sought after, and almost encouraged in reverse. This ties back in to the days of prohibition when alcohol consumption actually rose, even thought it was cut off from production and illegal in the eyes of the law. Essentially, it is the act of overconsumption and increased intoxication that creates harmful situations as a result. If the act of binge drinking were cut out of the drinking equation or even significantly lowered, we would be looking at less alcohol related incidents as a country, clearer decision making while under the influence and even out with other developed countries that have adopted lowered drinking ages. 

The United States also remains one of the only developed countries in the world that still has a drinking age set at minimum of twenty-one. As a major part of culture and a rite of growing up in many countries around the world, alcohol plays a significant role in the lives of many. In one hundred and fifty-seven countries around the world, alcohol usage is widely accepted and legal for young adults ages twenty-one and under, and in parts of Europe especially, drinking is an important part of growing up (Pro Con). However, the United States does not fall into this category and if anything, harshly discourages the opposite. Twelve other countries stand with the United States with ban alcohol usage until the age of twenty-one however. These twelve are represented by countries such as Oman, Samoa, Sri Lanka, Iraq and Kiribati to name a few, none of which even made it close to the top fifty countries represented on The Human Development Index, at which the United States currently sits in the top ten (Jahana). The Human Development Index takes into consideration the Life-Expectancy Index, Education Index and Gross National Income Index to develop an image of a country and its peoples way of life. While it does have some flaws and no report can take into consideration all factors of living, the Human Development Index does give a broad image of overall human development. 

For the one hundred and fifty-seven countries that have no ban on alcohol usage for those under twenty-one, learning how to drink appropriately is an important part of growing up and is a necessary life lesson. Recently Camille Paglia wrote, "Learning how to drink responsibly is a basic lesson in growing up  --  as it is in wine-drinking France or in Germany, with its family-oriented beer gardens and festivals ... " and it is these models of appropriate action that we are depriving our children of instead instilling them with the idea that alcohol usage is a crime, forcing them to hide and disguise their activities leading to terrible situations. If forms of alcohol were legalized earlier in a young adults life, such as beer or wine it would allow room for teachable experiences and growth regarding alcohol while growing up, versus a complete letting loose that hits many at the age of twenty-one. This would also allow the 'forbidden fruit' factor mentioned earlier to sizzle out of American culture, desensitizing its consumption and therefore minimizing binge drinking. 

However, ever since the raising of the minimum age to twenty-one, the opposition to lowering the drinking age has been unrelenting. Offering statistics from highway safety, to studies of human development, led by the organization Mothers Against Drunk Driving, there has been no real progress on the side of changing the age to eighteen. The argument as described by Laura Dean-Mooney President of Mothers Against Drunk Driving, centers around the main ideas that " ... since the 21 law was widely enacted, the number of young people killed annually in crashes involving drunk drivers under 21 has been cut in half, from more than 5,000 individuals in the early 1980s to around 2,000 in 2005 ... " and that " ... the neurotoxic effect of excessive alcohol use is a danger to ... key regions of the maturing adolescent brain ... " statistics that hold a valid weight but fail to recognize outside factors such as changed safety regulations in automobiles and the influence of binge drinking . It is believed by the followers of MADD that if the drinking age were reduced that poor decisions by young college students under the influence would result in more deaths due to drunk driving and alcohol abuse as it is believed that at the age of eighteen young adults lack the same cognitive skills as their elders. Many also theorize that sexual assault rates would rise, however if we were to lower the drinking age we would be bringing dangerous activity out of tucked away basements and into more public environments we would be discouraging activity of incredibly harmful nature such as binge drinking, sexual assault and drug usage as a whole.

But there is a reasonable solution that goes in hand with lowering the drinking age that could potentially keep organizations like MADD happy. With the proposal of lowering the drinking age to eighteen there must be mandatory alcohol education courses and a license to drink program for all young adults who intend to consume alcohol. This potential program would teach young adults the proper way to consume alcohol, and instill valuable information before turning them loose in the real world, much like one takes a drivers education course before being given the keys to an automobile. These courses could be taken at local libraries, and high schools on the weekends or online much like driver's education courses or standardized test preparation sessions. Session costs would need to be free however finding funding could be potentially problematic. However, a potential funding idea would be to take a portion off of every DUI ticket or alcohol related ticket and use that money to fund the programs.  

Ultimately, as a call to policy makers, parents and active members of society, the drinking age needs to be lowered in order to save student lives in college and reduce the risk of dangerous activities associated with binge drinking. As students are given all of the responsibilities and held to the same standards as their elders, they should be able to partake in alcohol consumption in a safe, public manner. Between lives lost as a result of trying to hide illegal behavior, to fake identification rings running rampant on college campuses, the solution of lowering the drinking age solves multiple problems at once. 

