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?
Lowering the drinking age is not going to stop binge drinking, but rather, would encourage it. When the “forbidden fruit” is no longer forbidden, youth simply drink more. In states where the drinking age was 18, those under 21 drank more than youth in states where the minimum drinking age was 21, and they continued to drunk more as adults in their early 20s. Further, a U.S. Department of Justice study concluded that European youth drink more and binge drink more often than their American counterparts, despite the fact that Europe has lower drinking age laws than the U.S.
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