Is the Drinking Legal Age Fair?

I’d Like a Beer with My Voters Card

At the age of eighteen a person is considered an adult.  Becoming an adult carries all the privileges and responsibilities of being legally accountable for your actions. Those privileges should include the right to decide whether or not to drink alcohol. At eighteen, you are able to get married, sign binding legal contracts, purchase lottery tickets and smoke cigarettes, and fight for your country, but you are unable to legally consume alcohol. Why is it that this country has a legal drinking age of twenty one? The illegality of alcohol consumption for eighteen year olds often times provokes abuse, over indulgence, and secretive binge drinking

A significant organization, Mothers against Drunk Driving (MADD), has become a powerful force across the country. Eventually all fifty states changed their laws to comply with the National Minimum Drinking Age Act. MADD is now battling the effort by another organization called Amethyst Initiative to lower the drinking age to eighteen years old. According to their website, Amethyst Initiative is a growing group of college presidents and chancellors across the United States who are publically calling on lawmakers to consider the problem of irresponsible drinking by young people, which continues despite the minimum legal drinking age of twenty-one. They warn of a dangerous culture of binge drinkers on and off college campuses. Alcohol abstinence as the only legal option has not resulted in behavioral changes among students. They argue that students, who choose to use fake IDs to acquire alcohol, make ethical compromises that erode respect for the law.

There is much truth to the arguments that are made by the Amethyst Initiative group. Because of the secretive nature of underage drinking, and the fact that teens are not permitted to consume alcohol in bars and other legal establishments, they are forced to subject themselves to alternative and unsafe options. Many have parties or...