Why the legal drinking age should be lowered
Twenty-one is the magic number to drink in the United States … legally. In Mexico, it’s 18. In Canada, 19. Of the 190 countries, 61 percent have a drinking age of 18 or 19 years old. The United States and 11 other countries have a drinking age of 21 years old. That’s right, 6 percent of countries have a drinking age of 21. 86 percent of countries have a legal drinking age of 20 or younger. 8 percent of countries have made it illegal to drink at any age.
In the ’70s, for some U.S. states the legal age was 18, and other states it was 19. You know, those days when you could get drunk at any random spot in town … nowadays the cops will write you up for a minor in possession, but back in the day they’d just tell you to go home. That quote isn’t coming from me though, but from the many parents I’ve had this same discussion with.
Humans love human interaction, stories, the whole nine yards. If alcohol is going to leverage that, why stop it?
So one asks,
“If the drinking age is 21 in the U.S., what can I do until then?”
Well, lots of things. You can go to war. You can smoke cigarettes. You can vote. You can get married. You can have sex and raise kids.
But God forbid some college kids go out and share some laughs over a couple of beers (or joints, but I’ll save that opinion for another day). These days you can’t go to a party for more than an hour without the cops shutting it down.
People need to realize we are a social species. Humans love human interaction, stories, the whole nine yards. If alcohol is going to leverage that, why stop it? Human interaction is a good thing. Sure, drinking and driving, and things within that nature are completely unacceptable, but to punish the ones doing it responsibly? I would say comical, but it’s really just sad.
There are so many rules to what we can and cannot do, why not give us a little bit of our freedom back?
Who’s to say drinking wouldn’t leverage the look of a college campus? If more people are interacting (especially on campus), then the feel of a campus becomes more positive. If you don’t drink, well then you don’t drink. No one’s going to hold it against you. We’re all different. Always shutting down parties, writing tickets to minors for drinking responsibly, it just sets a bad precedent.
What is this, jail? Dystopia? There are so many rules to what we can and cannot do, why not give us a little bit of our freedom back? It didn’t seem to harm our parents.