Lowering the Drinking Age

The great debate has started again. No. I'm not talking about the debates between the presidential candidates but rather about whether or not it makes sense to lower the legal drinking age in the United States down from 21 to 18. Now I've been of two minds on this topic for a while and I haven't been able to make up my mind about it. So I decided to lay out the facts as I see them in the case thinking that perhaps it would help me figure out whether I think it's a good idea or not.

Back during the Vietnam War, the voting age was lowered from 21 to 18 because it was argued that if the government could order kids as young as 18 to go to war, they should have some legal say as to what government is in power to enforce these types of rules. It was a fairly clear cut arguement and although there was some resistance to the proposal, it ultimately came to pass and many of us who were given the opportunity to vote in time for our 18th birthday took full advantage of it. I can remember standing proudly in line to vote back in 1996 and every year since then. It's just sad that now that we don't live in a time exactly like Vietnam that there is such ambivalence towards voting. Many teens could care less. But what does voting rights have to do with drinking?

Well, one would assume that if an 18-year-old is old enough to make an adult decision as far as who should be a leader is concerned then shouldn't they have the right to drink and make that decision for themselves as well? As a society we already allow teens as young as 16 to get behind the wheel of a powerful piece of machinery known as a car and drive around so shouldn't the power to drink be in their hands as well? Proponents of lowering the drinking age argue that at present, underage drinking is a common enough problem and it's more of a problem because so many teens are required to do it in secret which they argue leads to binge drinking and cases of 'overdoing it'. Now I would agree that there are some teens out there who take full advantage of such parties and take their drinking to the limit but it isn't everyone.

By lowering the legal age some people argue that the desire to drink would be curbed because it isn't something forbidden anymore. I know of friends who were denied even a taste of alcohol growing up and as a result, when they got to college, age be damned, they were determined to drink and drink and drink and some of them still drink far beyond excess as many times as they can. That's not to say that that problem would go away if you lower the drinking age but logically, if you could go every day to the pub on campus and order a beer without worry of being caught then wouldn't the natural tendency lean towards moderation? Perhaps.

Opponents say that all it would serve to do is to encourage drinking to excess. I remember the debate in London about allowing pubs to declare their own closing time rather than having a city-mandated closing time. What was stated was that because all pubs closed at a particular time, many patrons who showed up late would then drink to excess in a short time in order to get tipsy before the pub closed. When closing times were extended, many council members said that there would likely be more public drunkeness as heavy drinkers could now drink continuously over the course of the night. However shortly after the change was implemented, lo and behold, the cases of public drunkeness actually dropped and pub owners reported better sales due to more customers coming and going.

Now I don't think we need to implement anything like that but I think by lowering the age we make things seem less of a forbidden taboo and more of something that is normal. I mean take the case of kids; if you deny a young kid something saying that it's bad, the kid will continue being curious because they will want to know why it's bad. I don't think all teens drink to the point of being drunk all the time but they do overdo it on occasion to see what all the fuss is about. For me, drinking was never made out to be a forbidden activity so I never viewed it as such. Even today I don't drink all that much simply because it's not something grossly forbidden to me. Maybe it makes sense then to lower the drinking age; I'm sure the liquor industry wouldn't mind.