Alcohol and War

Drinking Alcohol At 21, How Ludicrous!

How the Federal Government can send those people under 21 to war, but not allowing them to drink alcohol is beyond me. If people between the ages of 18 and 21 are considered competent enough by the government to kill another man in the name of war, then he should at least be able to drink up to it when he is finished. The government seems to have this theory that when a man or woman becomes 21, they magically convert into a responsible person capable of handling the burden that comes with consuming alcohol.

Congress passed the National Minimum Purchase Age Act in 1984. This law was passed to encourage each state to change their legal drinking age to twenty-one years of age. The congress believed that if they raised the minimum drinking age that it would save a significant number of lives. They figured that a twenty-one year old person was more mature than the average eighteen year-old. That, in my opinion, couldn’t possibly be any farther from the truth. Just because a person lives to be twenty-one does not determine how mature they are. For example, there are many teenagers in the world that are considerably more mature than the average twenty-one year-old. The determination of legality in drinking should not be age, but dictated rather by maturity and the ability to handle responsibility.

If twenty-one is considered so mature, then why is eighteen considered an adult? At the age of eighteen, an individual can vote, serve on a jury, stay out without a curfew, leave home, drive, smoke, buy weapons, engage in financial contracts, fornicate, start a family, be sent to adult prison, join the army, and die for this country. If an eighteen year-old can be held to so many responsibilities, then it seems unfair to say that they are not old enough to drink. At eighteen, a person can even have a closed container of alcohol in their possession, but they cannot drink it. This is absolutely ludicrous!

Prohibiting the sale of alcohol to people under the age of twenty-one may cause habits such as binge drinking and alcohol abuse. It just causes a rebellion. Keeping the age at twenty-one makes it seem as if an eighteen year-old is not a real adult. Drinking is then viewed as a captivating activity since it is only for adults. Then, in rebellion, those underage will just find a way around it. For example, many have fake identification cards, steal alcohol from their parents’ liquor cabinets, or even put another person in peril by asking someone whom is twenty-one to illegally purchase the alcohol for the underage drinkers. This kind of deceitful attitude does not encourage responsible drinking habits.

In addition, this gives young individuals the urge to drink even more when they get older so that they could make up for their so-called lost time, hence causing alcoholism. The argument against changing the legal drinking age has many issues. Studies show that there was a thirteen- percent decline in the number of single-vehicle nighttime