From the moment a freshman says goodbye to their parents, and perhaps before, they can start their quest to become an alcoholic. While this country has a drinking age, it is completely ineffective in preventing underage college students from drinking.

To understand this fact, the best place to go is a house party. There you can buy a red cup and you are set for the night. Go around back where they keep the keg and see how much resistance you get, despite the fact that you look like a freshman in high school.

In 1984, the National Minimum Drinking Age Act was signed into law after intense lobbying from Mothers Against Drunk Driving. While the intentions of this legislation were quite honorable, this law has failed. All you need to get beer, wine, or liquor is an older friend, a fake id, or the id of an older friend who looks a little like you.

Behind the law were many studies showing that when the drinking age is raised, fewer teenagers are killed in alcohol-related accidents. What those studies do not show is whether there is an increase in the accidents in the 21-24 year-old range.

Of course fewer teenagers were killed in alcohol-related accidents when you tell them they cannot drink anymore. If the new drinking age were raised to 30, less twenty-somethings would die in alcohol related accidents. If people between the ages of 45-55 could no longer legally drink you would see a decrease in accidents for this age group as well. When you reduce the number of people eligible for drinking your numbers will go down no matter what the age group.

Our emphasis should not be on legal age, but on driving drunk. The United States has the oldest drinking age in the world. Many countries in Europe have legal drinking at age 14, and some have no age limit at all. Europe still has less drinking related accidents than the US though. Europe combines a lower drinking age as well as hard laws on drinking and driving. If you are caught behind the wheel drunk there is no slap on the wrist like in the United States as you can lose your license for life on the first offense.

The drinking age is actually counterproductive. Because of the drinking age in the US parents are discouraged from drinking with their children. In Europe children drink early on with their parents and learn how to treat alcohol with reverence and respect. America has an unnatural desire for alcohol created by the high drinking age combined with little early experience with it. It becomes a subconscious dangerous thrill to drink because it is “wrong.”

When an age limit is set, many times a dangerous event occurs. Twenty-one years of prohibition is drowned in a two-hour sitting starting at midnight on a person’s birthday. People are known to have died from this over indulgence. Turning 21 would not be so dangerous if there were a lower drinking age or not one at all.

Prohibition officially ended but you can still see it around today. During Prohibition police administered fines, kicked down doors in raids of private businesses and residences, and arrested citizens for simply possessing alcohol. Police are not kicking down the doors anymore, but fines and arrests are still prevalent. All the fines and arrests in the world would not be enough for the state to rid the world of drinking. Prohibition did not work in the first half of the 20th century, and it is not working for those 21 and under now.

The government has imposed laws on us “for our own good,” but drinking will never go away because there is nothing wrong with it. People know that. But they fear the government enough not to stop them. We are a nation of freedom. We should not fear our government, it is ours; they should be the ones who fear us.

Since the drinking age is ineffective and counterproductive, we move for the total abolishment of any minimum age. Or at the very least, lower it so that the eighteen year old who just became an adult can drink with the rest of us - legally. Ђ Σ

0 Comments