Teen Drinking

The drinking age in the United States is a contradiction. At the age of eighteen, one can drive a car, vote in an election, get married, serve in the military and buy tobacco products. In the United States you are legally an adult at eighteen. An eighteen-year-old, however, can not purchase alcoholic beverages. The minimum drinking age should be lowered from twenty-one in the United States. Unbelievably, the United States citizens trust their sixteen-year-old children to drive three thousand pound vehicles. We require our working young to pay taxes. We trust the decision-making abilities of eighteen year olds in public elections, with the right to smoke, and with the choice of marriage without parental consent. Our young adults are encouraged to join the army and fight for their country. We however believe that until the age of twenty-one our young adults can not handle alcohol. There is an ever-growing problem on campuses all across the nation: the abuse of alcohol. College freshman, usually nineteen, enter college with a bias involving the drinking law. “The average age at which Americans begin drinking regularly is 15.9 yrs.”