When I think about the different things that effect my life in a basic way every day, the fact that I am unable to consume alcohol legally is not one of my major hindrances. Despite this, I have chosen to write about the issue of the current legal drinking age in the United Sates. I believe that I chose this topic because it seems like a topic that has a bit of controversy but is not so extremely controversial that a lot of people will be emotionally invested one way or another. My personal stance on the argument of the legal drinking age is that it should be lowered to the age of eighteen. This is because of a few distinct factors that I have considered. The basic idea behind my argument is that, if the drinking age is lowered, many young people will engage in drinking earlier in their lives and be more socialized to it and be better prepared to combat binge drinking.  Most foreign countries have a legal drinking age of eighteen and happen to have much safer statistics when it comes to binge drinking and alcohol poisoning. This is an idea that makes a great deal of sense and is able to be understood fairly easily. I actually have friends from European countries such as the UK and when they come to visit they will tell me that they have been drinking since they were little at meals and because of that it seems that they make more sensible choices when it comes to the consumption of alcohol. For them, sensible choices are obvious because they have been drinking all of their lives and alcohol is not a “forbidden fruit” as it were. 

The first thing that one must do to understand the argument on the problem in question is to understand the law of which I am writing. In 1984, the federal government decided that all states must either choose to raise the legal drinking age to 21 or deal with an annual ten percent cut in federal highway dollars. This caused all of the states to eventually give up the drinking age of 18 and move up to 21. Having a required age of 21 to legally consume alcohol is very different compared to other countries. One stat that blew me away is that there are only 12 other countries in the world that enforce the same exact strict drinking laws as the Unites States (small interesting tidbit is that there are actually also 16 other countries that make alcohol illegal at any age). “Recent research published by the World Health Organization found that in many European countries where the drinking age is 18 or younger (and often not enforced), 15 and 16-year-old teens have more drinking occasions per month, but fewer occasions of dangerous intoxication than their American counterparts. In many southern European countries, roughly one in ten of all drinking occasions results in intoxication, while in the United States almost half of all drinking occasions result in intoxication.”(Choose Responsibility) According to the study I quoted, because of the fact that the drinking age is lower in Europe, many young people are able to drink in a casual setting without going overboard and becoming extremely intoxicated. It would very much be a logical conclusion to make that if the United States lowered the drinking age, and drinking at a younger age became more acceptable, young people would learn smart drinking habits and subsequently drink less in the future. ” We would have a lot less underage drinking problems if we lowered the drinking age to 18. Young adults are getting targeted at parties and social events at universities where police know there will be alcohol and the people who are there and under 21 get underage drinking charges (and people over 21 get charged with the supply of alcohol to minor). I am not even a huge drinker, just seems absurd that freshman and sophomores have to be sneaky about it, which leads to more issues. There is also a binge-drinking culture generally in the US” – Karina, 23”. This quote does a very good job of exemplifying the idea that is trying to be stated when it comes to this side of the issue. Because of the fact that the United States does have a drinking culture, young people feel pressured to drink at social events and this can very easily lead to binge drinking. If these young people had been allowed to drink in public and get used to alcohol, they can learn their limits earlier and not have trouble with this. 

I personally can attest to seeing many young people throughout this year who made the mistake of binge drinking too much and having to be hospitalized. One of my best friends actually had to go to the hospital after drinking around 14 beers in a 2 hour period and then chugging a bottle of liquor. I see people who are noticeably drunk walking around campus every weekend and they put themselves in very dangerous positions when they chose to do that. What these young people have in common was that they were not socialized correctly to alcohol and did not know their limits and when they should stop drinking.  In other countries, they allow their young people to consume alcohol at a younger age and the argument presented here is that if the United States did the same, we would experience a drop in the amount of binge drinking on college campuses and elsewhere. Personally, I do not believe that this argument is one-hundred percent perfect and I do believe that it does have a few problems such as statistics showing varying things and the fact that as far as I am concerned the argument boils down to “well Europe is ok with this, why aren’t we”. Despite this, I believe that this argument holds enough weight for me to list it first. 

The second major argument that I have run into is the idea that, if a person has the legal ability to buy a firearm, purchase a house, buy cigarettes, and join the military; they should be able to enjoy an alcoholic beverage at their leisure. “In the United States, at 18 you can join the Army, sign a contract, rent an apartment, get married, and undertake numerous other fun activities like pay bills. But the one thing you cannot do is have a beer. Now think about this for just a minute: you can join the Army, you can fight and possibly die for your country, but you are barred from legally having a beer. Yet the beer and spirits industry's marketing is aimed at young men and women who likely cannot legally purchase their product.” (Andersen) This argument is self explanatory and, in my opinion is the most compelling argument. Someone under the age of eighteen in the United States is able to make a great deal of decisions that can have the ability to greatly impact their lives in a negative way, but they can not enjoy an alcoholic beverage of their choice. Personally, I have a few friends who joined the military right after they graduated high school, these peers could now be put in the situation where they could be forced to dies for their country. If we, as a society, are asking people under the age of 21 to put their life on the line for their country, they should be allowed to experience every part of the country that they are fighting for. As far as I am concerned, that is one-hundred percent backwards and should be changed at once. Either the age to joint the military should be raised to 21 or the drinking age should be lowered to 18. As far as I am concerned, the fact that both of those ages are not the same is a real problem. Young people under the age of 21 are also able to get married but are unable to purchase alcohol. That idea is simply crazy and just stands as another example of how backwards things can be in our country. Its simply crazy the amount of things that people can do under the age of 21, but they are still not allowed to enjoy a beer. The best thing about this argument is that it is fairly self explanatory and does not require a great deal of reading into it. 

When it comes to any argument, there is another side to the story. The Mothers Against Drunk Driving has cited that since the lowering of the drinking age, the amount of traffic deaths relating to alcohol has gone down a drastic amount. “MADD claims the higher drinking age is responsible for a decline in annual alcohol-related deaths, from 26,173 in 1982 to 16,885 in 2005, as counted by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), with alcohol-related fatalities dropping more than highway deaths where booze was not a factor” (Daniloff).  This statistic stands as a very good reason that the drinking ban on people under the age of 21 should be upheld. The typical thing that someone standing against the drinking age being 21 would simply state that there are simply less people drinking under the age 21, therefore there will be less accidents involving it. MADD has those people defeated with the quote “with alcohol-related fatalities dropping more than highway deaths where booze was not a factor”. With a simple and easy to understand statistic such as that, one would believe that MADD has had an easy time keeping the drinking age low which it has. When it comes to arguments siding with the idea that the drinking age should not be changed, this one seems to be the most prominent. 

Another argument that I have seen on the internet quite frequently is that drinking is an integral part of many cultures worldwide. Even in our country, many parts of society are heavily intertwined with the consumption of alcohol in social settings. The simple fact is that people that are under the age of 21 will drink regardless somewhere. The advantage to making drinking legal at a younger age is that these young people do not have to worry about finding hidden places to consume alcohol. If drinking is legal these young people can drink in places that are designed for that such as bars. I can attest to the fact that our legal drinking age lead me to go to different places I would have not normally to consume alcohol. Many of the places that I would go to to drink would be unsafe and that could have been permitted had the drinking age been lowered. Another important idea to remember is the culture that is responsible for fake IDs and the disrespecting the law comes from this. “The disrespect to the law is fake IDs, the widespread purchase and consumption of alcohol by people who know it’s illegal, and the supplying of younger people by older or upperclassmen in college who think nothing of going out and buying alcohol and then making sure that everybody in their fraternity or sorority has access to it.” (Seaman). I can attest to this being very true, many people that I see around campus use fake IDs and it is not only disrespectful to the law, but can cause serious damage to someone’s life if they are caught with an ID that is not theirs. 

Because of all of this, these laws are very important to me because I have seen many friends make bad decisions and even get punished very harshly by institutions because of drinking laws in the United States.  I do not condone binge drinking, but I do condone the rights that anyone who is 18 years old has in the United States. The US is ahead when it comes to many social issues and polices, but as far as I am concerned the national drinking law does not work in today’s atmosphere. 
