Let me start this article off with a few clarifications.

First of all, I am 22 years old. I have been able to legally drink for over a year now. My opinion that the drinking age should be lowered is in no way because I am frustrated that I can't drink or because I just want to go to a bar with my friends. If anything, it would be a little annoying that it got changed right after I waited until I was 21.

Secondly, while this is a response to the Martese Johnson incident, I am under no impression that the drinking age is the sole problem here. Obviously, there is a lot more at stake — police brutality, the role of ABC officers, potential institutionalized racism — and a lot of those issues are arguably more important.

That being said, there is no reason that a twenty-year-old college student — a person who can die for his country, sign a contract, buy cigarettes and lottery tickets, and get married — should not be allowed to drink a beer.

Let's take a look at why the drinking age is 21 in the first place.

Before Prohibition started in 1920, there was no national drinking age. There were some states that had a drinking age set, but it was usually not strictly enforced. After Prohibition, some states set the age to 21; some set it lower. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, almost every state lowered the drinking age to 18.

Then in July 1984, Ronald Reagan signed the Minimum Drinking Age Act, which mandated that states raise the drinking age to 21 or receive a cut in federal funding. A few states resisted, but eventually the drinking age nationwide was 21.

Why the change? To protect against drunk driving. The 1970s saw a huge increase in drunk driving accidents, especially among 16 to 21-year-olds. The early 1980s saw a huge push against this trend, especially with the development of Mothers Against Drunk Driving (commonly known as MADD). The drinking age was changed to help prevent younger drivers from drinking and driving, and, to the law's credit, it worked. After the law was passed, the number of alcohol-related accidents was cut in half, mostly the accidents involving younger drivers.

Here's the thing, though: this was also the period of one of the most successful publicity campaigns of all time — MADD's campaign to eliminate drunk driving. Before MADD, drunk driving was considered much more acceptable than it is today. It is now completely taboo, something most people would never even consider. The National Institute of Health claims that the higher drinking age is the reason for the reduction in alcohol-related accidents. The decline in accidents certainly correlates with the rise in the drinking age, but I have to wonder: how much is because of the law and how much because of the change in our culture?

Today, I would argue that those below the age of 22 are actually less likely to drive drunk than older adults, at least those in college. Most colleges have parties and bars within walking distance for students, which means that there really is not any need for college students to drink and drive. The problem comes after graduation, when you are not walking distance from a bar or a friend's house. That's when there is the temptation to drink and drive because it becomes a lot more difficult to find a way home if you end up having one or two more than you were planning.

The other common argument for the higher drinking age is one's cognitive development. That's true. Your brain doesn't stop developing until your early twenties, and people who drink alcohol in their teens are much more likely to become addicted and have other drinking-related problems later in life. There's no argument to that. But college students and teenagers are going to drink regardless. And consider this:

First-year college students (most of them 18 or 19 years old) can't legally drink. They can't go to bars, and they can't really have their own parties because they live in dorms, where drinking usually isn't allowed. So instead, whenever they go out to a place where they probably can't get a drink (a date function, a football game, etc.), they pre-game. Hard. Hard enough to make sure they stay drunk for the whole event. So instead of legally enjoying drinks out at a casual pace, giving their body time to process the alcohol, they take several shots in their dorm before leaving. Does that seem safe? Is this law really protecting them, if that's what ends up happening instead?

When the Rolling Stone article about the alleged sexual assault at the University of Virginia was released, one of the major concerns was how the partying culture in college so easily puts first-year women at risk. That is the case because first-year students really do not have the option to go to parties and drink unless it is at a fraternity house, where the fraternity men control the alcohol. They can't have parties in dorms or go to bars, and they don't know enough upperclassmen usually to be invited to apartment parties. UVA did enact a new set of rules for fraternities that have made their parties much safer, but the problem still remains.

You know what would help solve that? Lowering the drinking age. That would allow these women — and first-year men — to have other options on a Friday night if they want to go out and drink. Bars aren't exactly the safest scene, but it's a lot safer to be getting drinks from a licensed bartender in a public establishment than in a fraternity basement.

And then there's the Martese Johnson situation. The investigation isn't finished, so I'm not going to presume any details; but, regardless of what happened, the incident never would have occurred if the drinking age was lowered. There would be no questions about the brutality and extreme actions of ABC officers, no reason for ABC officers to be so strictly patrolling the Corner, and — most importantly — no reason why an intelligent, capable, respected twenty-year-old student would not be able to enjoy a night out on the Corner with his friends.

There will always be people pushing for a higher drinking age and throwing out statistics about teenage injury and alcohol abuse. And that's not going to change, because regardless of what age you start drinking, alcohol can be very dangerous. But we need to stop kidding ourselves that college students aren't drinking. And we need to stop putting so much time, money, and effort into trying to catch them doing something that all of our parents also did when they were in college.

The drinking age does not need to be lowered to 18. It can be lowered to 19 to help keep alcohol out of high schools, and drinking hard liquor could remain illegal until age 21. But once you graduate high school, you should be allowed to drink.

The law needs to stop treating 18-21 year-olds as children. It needs to change. Now.