Living in America has been great in years past. After World War II, America was the center of the universe. At one point, when you became an adult at age 18, you were truly an adult. Adult responsibilities were given to adults, and those responsibilities came with certain privileges. The major privilege that came with adult life was drinking.
The notion that if one is old enough to be drafted, one is old enough to drink is something many young people still believe in. The endless governmental coddling has turned young people into excitable wrecks. Not being able to do something so basic as drinking alcohol for so long has turned consumption of liquor into binge-drinking on weekdays and a general ignorance of responsible consumption for those who choose to not follow the law. In the fake words of Marie Antoinette: "Let them eat cake."
If young people aged 18 and up can drink, a new generation of more responsible drinkers will be born faster, and drunken stupidity will be less common in more mature adults. Originally, the drinking age was brought back to 21 because of Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD). MADD showed very telling statistics about drunken motor vehicle fatalities among 18-20 year olds. Following their initiative, the drinking age was set at 21 in 1984. In years following, drunk driving fatalities decreased.
However, blaming young people for crashing and dying in drunk driving accidents wasn't really what solved the problem. Teaching young people why drunk driving is a monumentally dumb idea was the real reason for this decline. This education, along with safer cars and increased seatbelt usage, saved quite a few lives.
Similarly, teaching safe sex and contraception instead of abstinence-only education reduces the number of unplanned pregnancies in young people. So why is the drinking age still 21?
The same people who advocated for keeping their youngin's babyfaced are still around, making sure that people in the early stages of adulthood stay in a child-like stage because our parents don't think we can handle it. The helicopter parents try to keep us kids for as long as possible, and it's making our generation weaker.
It's time for change. It's time we put on our adult pants and let kids be kids and adults be adults. The in-between stage sucks for both parents and the in-betweeners. Throw it out. Let it go. We can handle it.
