We need to face the facts that underage drinking is extremely common. By ignoring this reality, we are forcing our youth to participate in dangerous and uncontrolled binge drinking. 

As an 18 year old, you are able to vote in local, statewide and national elections, but you are unable to drink a beer. At 18, you are allowed to go overseas to risk your life fighting for our country, but you are unable to drink a beer. Once we have reached 18, we are given the right to serve on juries, potentially making life or death decisions, but we re unable to drink a beer. How is it that once I turned 18 years old, I was officially considered by society to be an adult, but I was not deemed mature enough to handle any form of alcohol?                

The current drinking laws in the United States are outdated and unrealistic. As college students, we are consistently surrounded by alcohol, whether we participate in drinking it or not. In most cases, many of us have consumed some form of alcohol before we actually turned 21, and have been doing so for quite some time. According to a 2006 study by the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse, underage drinking accounts for 17.5 percent ($22.5 billion) of consumer spending for alcohol in the United States. According to the same study, 72.2 percent of 12th graders reported consuming alcohol at some point in their lives.  

The fact that nearly three-fourths of high school seniors surveyed admitted to drinking at some point in their lives, is not the only reason why I support lowering the drinking age. Currently, the U.S. is one of six countries, along with Fiji, Indonesia, Micronesia, Palau, and Sri Lanka, who have the strict drinking age of 21. All of the other 132 countries have drinking ages that range from no drinking age minimum to 20 years old, with the median age being 18.               

Because of this, children in other countries have grown up around alcohol at a younger age and therefore have learned to drink more responsibly. Consuming alcohol in these other countries is not seen as such a negative thing like it is in the U.S. In our country, many underage youths view drinking as the “forbidden fruit,” and because of the restriction, we have been forced participate in drinking behind closed doors. In turn, this has taught us to drink in a negligent manner.  

Those who oppose lowering the drinking age are quick to point out that because many young adults participate in unsafe drinking, our nation's roadways would be in danger of an increase in drunk driving related fatalities. Drinking and driving is extremely dangerous, and completely unnecessary, given all of the safer alternatives such as Uber and other taxi services. However, the risk of increased DUI related fatalities is bound to increase with a lowered drinking age. So how can we combat this?

I believe that if the drinking age is lowered to 18, then the U.S. should follow the lead of most countries in Europe and change the current maximum blood alcohol Ccntent level of .08, and lower it to .05. In turn, we should increase the punishments for DUI incidents. By doing this, we could potentially limit alcohol related accidents by a large percentage.              

I would like to go back in time and remind you what you have learned about the days of Prohibition. As a nation, we have tried, and failed on more than one occasion, to limit our nation’s irresponsible drinking habits. These laws were eventually labeled unenforceable due to the severe social backlash that came with alcohol restrictions. Today, we are repeating history and making the same mistakes of the past. Prohibition did not work back then, and the prohibition for young people under the age of 21 is not working now.