You are an Adult at 18
The drinking age is the lone exception to the legal age of adulthood in the US. The 26th Amendment to the Constitution, ratified in 1971, states explicitly that the right of a citizen age 18 to vote shall not be abridged on account of age. In the wake of the setting of the voting age, many states reconsidered the age of majority, and within little more than a decade, 18 had replaced 21 as the age at which one crossed the threshold of adulthood. In 2008, an 18 year-old may vote, sign a contract, serve on a jury, and be subject to the draft, but may not drink. Of course other rights or privileges are subject to various age restrictions, but no federal or state law mandates the age at which one can, for example, reserve a hotel room or rent a car. For young people who are deemed adults in the eyes of the law in every other respect, the drinking age seems, understandably, an incomprehensible act of age discrimination. And the condescending explanations so often given about lacking maturity and judgment do not persuade; they insult. Furthermore, in nearly all cultures, alcohol consumption is coincident with the legal age of adulthood. Legal Age 21 is out of step with the generally accepted societal norm of alcohol as accompaniment to maturity and adulthood.
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Drinking age should be 18 you can get married have childern,fight in the military ,vote,Why can't you have a beer with your frends.
I remain uncommitted...kind of. In my view, alcohol is a drug, like marijuana. Yet, it is treated differently by society. Because it is treated differently, we have to accept that our young people will drink. No, most are not ready at 17, 18, 19 or 20. I would argue that many who are 21 and over are not ready. Like European countries, we need to teach responsible drinking and take the glamour out of this "prohibited poison". With that in mind, it would make sense to lower the age to 18 and maintain our vigilent enforcement of laws pertaining to how people who drink affect others. Again, my drouthers would be to ban alcohol sales...along with tobacco sales. They have both been proven to be dangerous drugs.
Alcohol is a substance that can alter your judgment if consumed. Now let's ponder on that for a second...When teenagers at 18 decide to join the military they are thinking clearly about the consequence of their decisions. I will stress that point again, they are thinking clearly. Alcohol is no different than other drugs that are illegal such as marijuana. We can not trust teenagers from age 18-20 to drink responsibly, especially considering the fact that most of them do not have economic stability. There are so many things that can go wrong when teenagers get drunk such as drunk driving, fights and even rape. The bottom line is we can not lower the drinking age because most of the teenagers drink before the age of 21 and cause problems such as car accidents, so we can not give them further freedom and let them drink before the age of 21.
You appear to be linking together multiple unrelated items. Why does their "economic instability" affect their ability to be trusted. Why are you lumping together all 18-20 years olds and labeling them untrustworthy to make decisions regarding alcohol but not other decisions? The actions cited are illegal whether drunk or not (driving while impaired) and their is a moral implication to preventing crime at the expense of other's freedom. If alcohol is truly that wrong/bad then prohibit it to all and solve the consequences of such an action (marijuana) or treat it like other limited prohibition drugs (cigarettes) and let adults consume it at their own risk.
Adult behavior is not defined by age, it's defined by responsibility. Our education system has created artificial adults by allowing adult freedoms to young people without applying adult consequences. Binge-drinkers in the real world have serious difficulty finding employment or maintaining relationships. These potential consequences outweigh the desire to misuse alcohol; and so, most adult binge-drinkers bear the label "alcoholic."
By contrast, a student faces few real, immediate or comprehensive consequences for binge-drinking. Universities that are serious about the safety of their students should implement no-tolerance policies for binge-drinking and its accompanying behaviors, and stop wasting time lobbying on this issue. This law is not the problem; I doubt that either changing it or allowing it to remain will address binge drinking.
Public behavior is what is key to your statement, not the cause whether it be binge drinking, drugs or brain damage. If a student is disrupting classes then the college can and should punish the student and remove them from class. This is the responsibility of the professor and should be supported by the president and administration. This is no different than workforce punishment since it is unlikely that a applicant would be asked "are you a binge drinker?" and thus a decision could not be made solely upon an answer to that question.
If supporters of the Amethyst Initiative had bothered to research 'binge drinking' they would have discovered that the UK’s binge drinking problem is greater than the United States’ and the UK’s drinking age is lower. No one in the UK suggests that a lower drinking age, i.e. easier access to alcohol by those who are abusing it, would result in lower abuse rates.
I want to know is why they don’t suggest raising the drinking age to 22 or 23, after most students are out of college? Its not like they're fooling anyone, they just want to hand off the problem to someone else, i.e. High School Principals, rather than deal with the problem themselves.
I strongly encourage you to read and forward the following article to college presidents: http://natchgreyes.blogspot.com/2008/08/american-college-presidents-seek-to.html
Not only does bumping the legal age further expand the number of persons being oppressed but for those who do break the law there is no real fall-back aside from the legal system. At least colleges are worried about their students but employers have enough to worry about without taking on the responsibility for the drinking habits of their employees.
Lower the age may indirectly shift the responsibility to High School Principles but it will also push it back onto the parents who are the actual criminals in the equation since it is they who did not instill respect for authority in their now rebellious children. Society's blame in this is that by having a legal drinking age we've delayed the manifestation of symptoms and thus removed parents from being a viable intervention group and instead forced colleges and law enforcement to act.
We do not expect employers to monitor and correct the drinking habits of their employees so why should we expect college presidents, whose major goal is to provide quality educational facilities, to become monitors of their students. Aside from disrupting class (in which case the student can and should be tossed out or suspended) if the student behaves in accordance with all school rules and regulations then from the school's perspective there is nothing that they are compelled to do. The police and district attorneys are given the responsibility to investigate and enforce our laws; and parents are tasked with the responsibility of teaching these laws to their children and helping them to understand the how and why of laws.
If you would do some research, you would find out that they realized that the cause of "binge drinking" in the UK was primarily due to having an laughably early "last call." So people would drink several drinks at the end of the night. Recently they've allowed last call to be later, and have found a decrease in the amount of binge drinking.
As I've read in several other comments, at 18, you're legally an adult. At that point you can serve in the military, get married, buy a house, etc. So, if you're deemed capable of handling these responsiblities by the federal and state governments, why can't you handle the responsiblity of having a drink or two? Like mmsomekid said above, "People seem to confuse drinking with getting drunk." Allowing parents to teach their kids at an early age and cracking down on drunk drivers would solve a lot of the issue.
I do not believe any of these regulations should be the measure of an adult, least of all drinking age. Drinking, by its very nature, is irresponsible. Yes, I am saying "responsible drinking" is an oxymoron. We drink to leave behind the responsibilities of the work day. We poison our body and alter our judgment.
Lowering the drinking age is slapping a band-aid on the problem so its legal in college, where the law isn't taken serious anyways.
Moderate drinking not only offers no real negative side effects but it is extremely good for the heart and is associated with longevity. It's when one drinks in excess that it harms the body and leads to bad decision making.
Refer: http://www2.potsdam.edu/hansondj/alcoholandhealth.html
Not only the above points, but in the safety of the home, perhaps leaving behind the responsibilities of the work day for an hour or two can be a healthy outlet.
I do not believe that Age is what makes a person an adult. Neither does their ability to serve in the Military. The law of our country has made it so that our Kids 18-21 can die in the service of our country.
Just because we allow that does not mean we should make it easier for them to kill themselves and others with a loaded bottle of Alcohol.
If age doesn't determine adulthood, what does? Biologically, Humans are adults once they finish puberty ~13-16. Don't complain too much about 18 being too young.
There is one problem. They are legal adults, not kids like you assume. And just like smoking a cigarette or joining the military, drinking alcohol is a personal decision that must be made by a legal adult who is fully aware and accepts the consequences of it. 18-20 year olds aren't incapable of drinking responsibly, so we should stop acting like it. As long as we educate them while promoting responsibility and maturity, they should be allowed to possess and consume alcoholic beverages, especially within the home!
It truly does seem absurt that an adult of 18 who can be drafted into compulsory military service to die for his or her (in the 21st century, who knows if the draft won't apply to females?) country cannot even console himself by sitting down legally with a cold beer or a lively shot of Jaeger. And, as always, the issue of the divorce between law and practice--'de jure' and 'de facto'--comes into play. As a young man myself, I can hardly think of any single individual who has made it to the age of 21 without a substantial drinking history. Why legislate something which is hardly taken seriously by anyone?