Do you remember your first taste of alcohol? How old were you? Twenty-one? All 50 states currently demand that their citizens reach age 21 before they can legally drink. But there's a growing movement that says mandatory minimum laws may do more harm than good. When determining the right date when a young person can take one of their final steps towards personal responsibility and freedom, what's the right answer?
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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