Should the Legal Drinking Age Be Lowered to Eighteen?

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Should the legal alcohol drinking age be lowered to eighteen? At the age of eighteen years old, you are eligible to vote, you can legally purchase cigarettes, you are eligible for the military draft, you are willing to die for this country, you are even able to serve on a jury, and you are titled as an adult at the age of eighteen. Why can’t someone at the age of eighteen not drink alcohol? Who is to say that just because someone is twenty-one years of age means that they are wise enough to drink alcohol in an accountable conduct? There are several explanations why one ought to be able to drink alcohol at the age of eighteen. The minimum legal drinking age was not always twenty-one; it has fluctuated between twenty-one and eighteen over the past few decades. In the article, “Underage Drinking and the Drinking Age” by Carla T. Main, the issues of voting age during the Vietnam War are discussed. Furthermore, she speaks about how the change of the legal voting age is linked to the change of the minimum legal drinking age. During the Vietnam War, lowering the voting age to eighteen became an issue. Many felt as though they should be trusted to vote if they were trusted to fight for their country. Along with this issue came the issue of lowering the minimum legal drinking age as well. Americans began to realize that as eighteen year olds, citizens were given many rights, and those should include voting and drinking. At eighteen, rights include serving the United State military, the ability to get married, and being able to legal sign contracts on your own. After much attention, the voting age was changed. In the article, “The Drinking Game”, Marshall Poe discusses the change of the voting age during the Vietnam War. “The needed three-f... ... middle of paper ... ...similar to them, can significantly improve the occurrence of unsafe underage drinking on college campuses. To make the lower drinking age work, we will need the help of the parents, the teachers and every role model possible. We need to teach the younger generations the disadvantages of drinking regularly, but we must not prohibit it. We should not embrace it, but not take it away. We must teach the young adult/teen how to deal with the “forbidden fruit”. Teach them how to take a sufficient amount that will not hurt them or others. It is time to approach this situation in a different manner, not to prohibit it, and not to pretend that it is not happening. But by making the safest environment possible for this to be taken care of appropriately, will help significantly. It’s time to try to improve our life quality by equally being able to enjoy what life has to offer.

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