At University of South Carolina on any given night every single bar downtown is jam packed with underage drinking. I'm talking 7 days a week, bouncers look at our hideously badly made fraud licenses and let us into the bar anyway because that's how the bar will make money. Cops, of course, are not stupid. So why exactly is it that every person on my freshman dorm hall is out on a Friday taking shots at the bar? A majority of USC is under 21, I'm sure the Police know that ... and yet, they do nothing. So, the teenagers go out and get plastered. Who says the girl who was at the wrong place at the wrong time deserves to get arrested for doing what every other teenager is doing? The law? The drinking age being twenty-one is outdated and unrealistic. It does not stop teenagers from drinking, it only stops them from drinking safely. The current drinking age needs to change back to eighteen for the same reasons it was raised in the first place, it is safer to.

Being eighteen years old and attending a college, especially one that is well known as being a party school, I seem to have an automatic bias toward this issue. I have seen people throw up on police officers and walk away without even a warning and seen people get into bars using a Subway giftcard as "ID" while others get arrested on the spot for being near a bar. The inconsistency in enforcing the law is unbearable. Many people support the idea of keeping the drinking age at twenty-one, a lot of reasoning being that the brain is not yet fully developed and that drinking and driving is a huge issue in teenagers. In the age of Ubers and Designated Drivers, I have yet to drink and drive and see any of my friends do so. People jump on those who even try to grab their keys after a drink. As for the brain development, which was not even a huge concern in the sources, teenagers will drink regardless. Teenagers drink and because it is illegal, they are not properly educated on the topic and are too scared to ask or get help when they have had too much which is a huge reason there are so many incidents. "Allowing eighteen to twenty year olds to drink alcohol in regulated environments with supervision would decrease unsafe drinking activity" (http://drinkingage.procon.org.).

Any student at a university in 2016 will see a lot of underage drinking, almost as much as you see random unlucky people's lives go down the drain due to an MIP (Minor In Possession). A girl I know has been ready to serve in the AirForce since the 3rd grade, her dream since she knew what the Military even was. Her close friend begged to take her out a few weeks ago in celebration of receiving a $100,000 scholarship from the AirForce to attend University of South Carolina and then enlist. The two girls         received an MIP from two officers while walking back to their dorm due to smelling like alcohol after returning from the bar. The girl lost her entire scholarship and was kicked out of ROTC, her dream now completely devoured.

Eighteen is the age of adulthood for a variety of reasons. You can buy a pack of cigarettes, serve jury duty, get married, join the military, and most importantly: get   prosecuted as an adult. The definition of an adult is "a person who is fully grown or     developed" according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary. An adult has the right to make their own decisions, what makes alcohol so different? In 2009, the twenty-one to twenty-four age group had the highest percentage of drivers in fatal crashes with BAC levels of .08 or higher. Traffic accidents and fatalities are most common among newly-legal drinkers, regardless of the MLDA. According to the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse, underage drinking accounts for 17.5% of consumer spending for alcohol in the United States. 17.5% sounds like a small number until you think about how if the law was truly enforced, it would be 0. The law is not only no longer helpful to its original purpose, to decrease drunk driving incidents, but also overall simply is not     effective in its enforcement.

I am interested in this topic because I personally witness a large amount of instances in which this law is not enforced. I see a lot of underage drinking, as does every college in America, and it happens whether or not the legal age is twenty-one. But what does happen when the legal age is twenty-one is fear. People become too afraid to ask for help or education on what to do when it comes to alcohol due to unforeseen consequences. I've seen a friend almost die from alcohol poisoning and the girl I was with told me to not call 911 because we would all get into trouble. It's simply not safe. I am an eighteen year old in college constantly surrounded by underage and unhealthy binge drinking. The drinking age should be lowered to eighteen, fast.
