As the sun set slowly on the horizon, the music is pumping. There were hormonal boys and girls left and right. Maybe Tony could get some luck tonight. After all, he did put on that special cologne all the girls were fussing about. Axe Phoenix. Gets 'em every time. At the biggest party in the city of Boston since Winter Break, everybody was in their ace games. In no time, Tony had a drink in his hands. Then another. Then another. To those who knew how to party, this kid was doing it RIGHT. That is, until his knees buckled, and he collapsed onto the beer-soaked carpet. Everyone laughed at first, but after seeing that he wasn’t getting up, people got worried. They slapped him, nudged him, and begged him to wake up. On March 2, 2013, Anthony Barksdale II, age 19, died of asphyxiation at a Boston University frat house. An honors student from New Hampshire with many promising years ahead of him, was gone in a single night. Why didn’t anyone bother to call the police? His parents? Why didn’t anyone drive him to the hospital immediately?

The answer was simple. Anthony was underage.

According to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, over 400 underage drinkers fall victim to this fatal scenario every year. Children and young adults often find themselves confused and indecisive upon seeing a dangerously intoxicated friend or peer, fearing the legal consequences of underage drinking. As a result, they do not react quickly enough to save the victim from an alcohol-related death.

But to truly understand this issue, we will first acquire an idea of America's harmful drinking culture and the effects of illegal underage drinking. Then, we will discuss the push to decrease the minimum legal drinking age. Finally, we will look beyond the fun and games and speculate some of the benefits that such a decrease would bring to the United States.

It all started with the American Prohibition in 1920. In speakeasies and blind pigs across the nation, adults of all ages drank in constant fear of being caught by the feds. As a result, they resulted in normalizing the kind of binge-drinking that exists in high school and college parties today. New York Times best-selling author Gabrielle Glaser calls it the "Forbidden Fruit Syndrome", a phenomena that explains why people want what they cannot have. It has perpetuated itself throughout history, from the Prohibition to the modern day, where restrictive drinking laws have driven people underground both literally and figuratively.

When the minimum drinking age was set at 21 in the 1980s, many fraternities across the country thought of an excellent way to conduct rites-of-passage ceremonies. Yeah, and it has become somewhat of a religious activity. John McCardell Jr., the president of Middlebury College in Vermont, estimates that the minimum age drinking law is ignored by about 70% of his underclassmen. Barred from bars, where do they all go? Increasingly massive fraternity blowouts that make your school dances look like a three-year-old's birthday party. In open defiance of the law, students party with the goal of drinking as much as they can, as fast as they can. With young adults at the peak of vigor and youth, that becomes a dangerous amount, dangerously fast. Thus is our culture. Today's law, like the Prohibition in the 1920s, is failing us.

Ever since the U.S. Congress dropped the voting age from 21 to 18 in 1971, states have made pushes on multiple occasions to drop the drinking age to 18 as well. Supporters made a simple argument: If young Americans could be trusted to vote, serve on a jury, be forced to travel across the world to be shot at, and smoke tobacco, why couldn't they order a beer with some friends? According to a survey by the State University of New York, over 100 foreign nations set their minimum age at 18 or lower. What interested state legislators at the time was that most of the developed countries experienced historically lower rates of alcohol abuse and alcohol-related crime. Some states did manage to make exceptions to the federal minimum drinking age, but what they saw was not encouraging. According to a CNN report, automobile fatalities increased by almost 500 a year immediately following legislative action, and the states immediately reversed course. What had they done wrong? This is where my advocacy comes into play.

As I mentioned before, the problem isn't in the law, it's in our CULTURE. Of course simply lowering the age limit from 21 to 18 would just expose more kids to danger. This is why a planned and carefully organized change is so promising. If a plan, for example, that year by year gradually lowers the drinking age a year at a time were to be implemented, America’s inherent cultural problem might be tackled. This type of plan addresses the issue of exposure and education. Dwight B. Heath, a professor of anthropology at Brown University, advocates a minimum legal drinking age to be as low as 6. Now before you dismiss him as absolutely insane, remember that he's a professor of anthropology at Brown. Professor Heath makes the point that the taboo allure of drinking still pervades American society, where children associate it with maturity and coolness, sneaking away from adult supervision to sneak a taste or binge drink. In contrast, it is the cultural norm for children to drink small amounts of wine at family meals in many modern European nations. This attitude toward alcohol, along with the accompanying education, makes alcohol no big deal over there. With a plan like this, the "forbidden fruit" becomes.... just another fruit.

Not only that, this type of plan also has a shock absorber and balancer implemented into it. It is not surprising that previous attempts to lower the drinking age have failed. The sudden drop caused a flood of newly legal citizens to try out their new rights, according to Brandon Griggs of CNN. The sheer volume of young drinkers is what caused an increase in alcohol-related fatalities and crimes. That's why a flexible law, applied over a long time period, solves this exact issue. As more and more young adults are allowed to participate with each passing year, they will be easier to monitor and regulate. If any problems are observed at any point, the program can simply be scaled back, because it's very possible to strike a balance between too much freedom and too much regulation.

But wait, there's more! With the acquisition of two benefits, there will be one benefit FOR FREE. In addition to changing America's dangerous attitude toward alcohol, a plan like this will have positive effects on the American economy. Dollars and Sense, an economics website, makes the comparison to the nation's increasingly legal marijuana market. As a new program is being phased in in pilot states like Colorado, state and local governments are considering implementing sales and excise taxes on the recreational drug, potentially generating billions of dollars of revenue nationwide. Of course making alcohol legal to 18, 19, and 20 year olds would have a smaller effect, but an appreciable effect nonetheless.

I was watching the Discovery Channel the other day, and I heard something from a man whose name didn't show up on screen. He asked about why we constantly undergo revolutions in science and technology and knowledge, but do nothing about the society we live in. Medical News Today states that each year in America, the Forbidden Fruit Syndrome poisons over 400 teenagers, but it also causes 600 suicides, 1400 homicides, and 1500 auto accidents. Evoking the wise words of philosopher/rapper Sage the Gemini, I like to say that America's attitudes toward alcohol are "Hella thick, I wanna smash 'em all." Do we have the courage to try fixing America's broken culture? Can we allow ourselves to transform society, just like we advance in science and technology to find better ways to live?

The sober truth is, it's really up to us to decide.