There comes a point in a person’s life when they are considered an adult. With this title of adult comes the ability to vote for public office, serve in the military, sign legal documents, and get married. The magical age when all of this becomes a reality for people is 18. There is one thing that is not under that list that is often debated about and that is the legal age at which people can purchase and consume alcoholic beverages. If an 18-year old can put their life on the line fighting for our country, why can’t they go home after a long day and enjoy a few drinks. The current drinking age of 21 is causing incidents on college campuses and in teens’ lives nationwide and should be lowered to eliminate traffic fatalities, suicide rates, law incidents, and hospitalizations/deaths due to excessive alcohol consumption.

In 1984, Ronald Reagan signed the National Minimum Drinking Age Act which stated that states must raise their drinking age to 21 or risk losing highway funding, thus resulting in the minimum age for people to purchase and consume alcohol being raised from 18 to 21 throughout the United States. While some people argue that the raise in the age has increased traffic fatalities among young adults and teens, other people argue the age limit has created a culture in which underage drinking has been driven behind closed doors which in turn has created the binge drinking culture in the US. The constant controversy between organizations such as Mothers Against Drunk Driving and The Amethyst Initiative has fueled large amounts of debate and are trying to come to a consensus on the age limit. Countries across the world have lower drinking ages and can be a model for the US to follow. Underage people are going to drink alcohol regardless, on college campuses and elsewhere, so why set a limit on the age they can legally do it if it is only going to cause issues?

A major focus for this issue is on college campuses. It is safe to say that most 18 year olds are looking at colleges and are preparing to be sent off to spend their next four years away from home. It is no secret that college kids drink a lot regardless of the age restrictions. Throughout most colleges across the country there are obvious binge drinking issues, often resulting in hospitalizations, deaths, possession charges, and fake identification charges. The more obvious and easier problem to solve here is the issues of possession and fake identification charges. Solving these issue is the easy part. Reduce the drinking age and obviously, there will be no more issues of minors in possession and fake identification on college campuses. Where it gets more complicated is the issues of hospitalizations and deaths when kids drink too much and cannot control themselves. The Safe and Drug-Free Schools and Communities Act was passed to require schools to enforce the drinking age, yet administrators have said the enforcement of such rules is not very prevalent and that they put their focus on educating students on the dangers instead. In a survey on college campuses throughout the country, only one in ten kids reported having gotten in trouble for their actions. President of Middlebury College and advocate for The Amethyst Initiative came out and stated, “Our latter-day prohibitionists have driven drinking behind closed doors and underground,” which, coming from a primary source and a witness of these issues on college campuses, is something to consider when it is said by an authority figure such as himself. He later goes on to say, “Colleges should be given the chance to educate students, who in all other respects are adults, in the appropriate use of alcohol, within campus boundaries and out in the open.” in which he demonstrates that if these young adults could legally drink, they would become more understanding of the effects of alcohol at an earlier age, thus leading to a decrease in substance abuse. The Amethyst Initiative is currently being backed by 136 college presidents and chancellors across the country and has been gaining more supporters since it launched in 2008. 

In an interview McCardell on the TV show 60 minutes, he talks about how he sees the impacts of the drinking age on college campuses and why he believes it needs to be changed. He talks about how the current drinking age has only driven underage drinking underground and hasn’t reduced or eliminated it in any way. The law is not effective in that police cannot enforce it. For every 1000 violations there are only one or two arrests or convictions. Police officials agree with McCardell in that they simply cannot stop underage drinking. They can write all the tickets they want but in the end, all they are doing is driving the issues further underground and behind closed doors. In another part of the interview, the parents of a kid who died from drinking too much during pledgeship for a fraternity at Boulder. The parents believe the reason the kids didn’t call 9-1-1 was because he was underage and they would’ve gotten in trouble. If he was legally drinking, the kids would’ve gotten help and he wouldn’t have died. McCardell argues that while the number of kids dying on the road is an issue, since raising the drinking age, there has only been an increase in the numbers of kids dying off the road from drinking too much.

An interesting idea McCardell brings up is installing classes about alcohol in schools and allow kids to have the chance to get educated about the chemistry of alcohol and how it affects you. Kids would have to sit in on AA meetings to hear firsthand how people have been affected by alcohol abuse. Once kids take these courses and go through all the steps, they would get what is essentially a license to drink. Putting the drinking age at 18 and educating people on the subject would lower the number of people binge drinking and lower the number of incidents due to high amounts of alcohol intake.

The current culture that is brought upon underage kids is no doubt a negative one. America is known to have some of, if not the most, drinking problems in the world. Overseas in countries in Europe and Asia there are lower drinking ages if any drinking age at all. Yet the United States having a drinking age of 21 has the most issues. In places like Italy and France kids are taught to respect alcohol and treat it as just drink you have with a meal or drink casually with some friends. They are never surrounded by the constant alcohol abuse that is seen in the U.S. 

The biggest argument that comes in support of not changing the drinking age is the decrease in the number of traffic fatalities since the age limit was raised in 1984. There was a decrease of about 33 percent from 1988 to 1998. Mothers Against Drunk Driving is the biggest advocate for keeping the drinking age the same because there has only been a decrease in the number of fatalities in the US. The National Highway Transportation Safety Administration has stated, “Minimum legal drinking age laws have proven to be a very effective and important countermeasure for reducing drunk driving when younger drivers are involved,” which shows that this credible organization has seen a decrease in alcohol related traffic deaths since raising the minimum age. They believe the higher age limit has prevented about 500 deaths every year. What the study doesn’t include is data from other countries around the world such as Germany where the drinking age is only 16. From 1975 to 1990, there was a 57 percent decrease in alcohol related traffic fatalities. It is this data that leads to the question, is the current age limit really the most effective way to reduce incidents? Clearly a lower age limit on alcohol has seen more drastic effects over a longer period. Thus, the decrease in fatalities in the US shouldn’t be accredited to a higher drinking, but rather is a result of a combination of law enforcement, education, and advances in automobile-safety technologies such as airbags and roll cages. Kids are driving safer cars and police officers are cracking down on underage purchases and fake identification. Schools are focusing on educating kids on the issues of underage drinking and how it effects their lives in negative ways. The article talks about how there was a decrease in alcohol-related traffic fatalities since 1970, but the drinking age was already 18 until 1984 so that data is inconclusive in determining if the age limit is responsible. What this data didn’t consider was the fact that teenagers who were ages 18-20 in states that had a legal age of 21 could just drive across state lines and purchase all the legal liquor they wanted, get boozed up, and drive back across state lines. It was this action that caused an increase in driving related incidents. This was a major issue that could’ve been solved with a simple solution: make the legal age limit the same in all states. But instead they raised the drinking age which resulted in more issues other than driving related ones.

While kids are being educated on the subject more, they are still in fact underage and cannot legally experiment with the substance to fully understand its effects. A lower legal age limit will allow kids to learn firsthand what drinking does to them. Parents will have the ability to better monitor their kids’ behaviors and choose how to educate them on the subject. Sure, you can argue that if the drinking age is lowered to 18, then kids younger than that will have even more access to alcohol, but kids at the age of 16 and lower are much more restricted by their parents. Without the ability to drive and go places they want without the approval of their parents, kids won’t be able to get places where they can illegally drink their alcohol.

It is important to look at other countries and study how their low drinking ages have affected their lives. A 2003 study showed that in many countries with lower minimum drinking ages, 15- and 16-year-olds are less likely to become intoxicated compared with teens in the U.S. Brenda Chabon, associate professor of clinical psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Montefiore Medical Center in New York states that, “What would harm a developing brain is repeated hangovers and blackouts and head trauma from falling. But if someone were drinking moderately from age 18, I haven't seen any data to show that would have harmful effects in the long run.” She later says, “It's the way people drink, not the fact of drinking” which shows how these experts believe the reason for all the issues in the united states is the culture that is brought upon kids 18-20 years old when it comes to drinking. They feel the need to do it behind closed doors and consume large amounts at once. As stated in an article in The Huffington Post, “This study, however, conducted by the Prevention Research Center, contends that European teens spend more time intoxicated than Americans”. The author later states that, according to the study, “The number of reported cases of alcohol poisoning rose from 779 to 2,290 between 1998 and 2005 for 18-24-year-olds in the US” which, at first impression, may seem like an issue. But, if you start to think about it, if there are more people intoxicated in European countries but they are more responsible and not causing as many issues, they must be doing something right.

A change in the drinking age would essentially just be an experiment, which is why people are hesitant to give the ide a chance. Obviously, there would not be a change in current habits of kids 18-20. The current culture is represented by a large amount of binge drinking among college and high school students. A lower drinking age would be helping the people are currently in elementary and middle school. They would be brought into adulthood with an understanding of how alcohol works and how their lives can be negatively impacted by it. People who have lived through both a drinking age of 18 and 21 are in support of lowering it again.