Alcohol

Should the drinking age be lowered to 18?

I am going to go ahead and say no. Let's look at why. First, let's look at the problems with the drinking age as it is now. One argument I have heard is as follows: People get their drivers license around the age of 16. They proceed to become adept at driving, and 5 years later, when they can drink, they are very confident in their driving ability, and thus they are not very careful, even without throwing alcohol into the mixture. At age 21, suddenly a door is opened and they can drink all they want. This sudden freedom, coupled with the years and years of hype about alcohol, tripled with their confidence in their driving ability all lead to serious car accidents. The reasoning is sound, but only if you intend to have the drinking age reduced to 14 or lower. Somehow, I don't think that would go over well with most parents. Now, as someone who is under the age of 21, lowering the drinking age would be pretty cool, but there are a number of reasons why it's impractical. First of all, in effect, it's pointless. The people who are the problem (i.e. the people who cause car accidents, do stupid things while drunk, etc.) are generally underage drinkers anyways. Making their drinking legal would only mean that their displays of drunken stupidity would be more public. Further, if the legal drinking age were reduced, then all of those 18-20 year-olds who actually obey the law would be free to drink, and you would only be adding to the percentage of the population that can do damage to themselves and others. So really, lowering the drinking age would have very little effect, other than allowing thousands of underage drinkers to continue practicing their craft with a clear conscience. Further, it would encourage them to go to even greater (and more public) lengths to see who can be the most idiotic drunk in the state. Even without all that, there is another problem. Right now, the legal drinking age is 21, yet there are thousands and thousands of 16-20 year-olds who drink anyway. If you reduce the drinking age by three years, then it follows that the actual drinking age would become 13 and up, instead of 16 and up. Of course, when dealing with something as complex as large populations and their drinking habits, the numbers probably don't work out that perfectly. Maybe the age would be 12 and up, or maybe it would be 14 and up, but the point is that the devil you know is better than the one you don't. That, of course, assumes that the motivation for changing the drinking age would be to reduce the number of alcohol related incidents. If the motivation is simply that you're underage and you want to drink legally, well, tough noogies. I would love to have a beer or two every once in a while as well, but the number of forseeable evils vastly outweighs our selfish desire to enjoy ourselves a bit. There are, however, plenty of exceptions.

Also, let us further examine the motivation of those who want the drinking age lowered. This really only applies in 42 states, but I think that's probably enough to make this relevant. 42 states allow underage drinking in private, non alcohol-selling residences with parental consent. If someone is so set on drinking alcohol outside of the presence of their parents that they want to change the legal drinking age, what reason is there to believe that they are being intelligent with their drinking? Yes, there are plenty of parents who refuse to allow their kid to drink alcohol under any circumstances, but most of the time there is a reason for that. Namely, the strength of the kid's common sense and reasoning ability.

In conclusion, it seems that it would be a bit pointless to lower the legal drinking age. The number of problems that it would cause outweighs the good it would do, if there actually is any positive good that it would do.