The world that is around us today is full of rules and laws that we all must obey in order to be considered good citizens. These rules and laws are everywhere you turn, telling you want to do, what not to do, who you cant marry, how old you have to be when you can get married, when you can drive, when you can have sex, when you can vote on issues that are important to you, and when you can drink alcohol. In the United States , there have been numerous discussions regarding lowering the minimum legal drinking age from twenty one to eighteen. The reason that the United States should lower its minimum drinking age is because in almost every other country in the world young people at the age of eighteen are legally allowed to drink alcohol, in the United States eighteen year olds are considered legal adults, and many young people under the age of twenty one drink alcohol anyway.
In the United States, at the age of eighteen you are considered a legal adult are allowed to vote, fight in a war for your country, have sex, smoke cigarettes, get married, and even go to a penitentiary. You can get married, yet you can not legally take a drink of champagne at your own wedding. You can fight for your country, yet you can not celebrate your return home with a can of beer and your buddies. Drinking alcohol should be included in this list of things that you can do once you turn eighteen. It is true that many young people at the age of eighteen are not necessarily as mature as they would be at twenty one, yet they are still capable of adult reasoning and thinking. Young people at the age of eighteen have a maturity level that should constitute being allowed to drink alcohol because you are an adult. I also believe that once you are an adult there should be no restrictions on what you can do, if you choose to do so. I do not think that the consumption of alcohol should be restricted to people who are twenty one or older, seeing as how once you are eighteen you are an adult and as an adult you should be able to do as you please.
Not only should eighteen year olds be able to drink because they are legal adults, but eighteen year olds should also be able to drink legally because eighteen year olds drink alcohol anyway. A study of a large sample of young people between the ages of 16 and 19 in Massachusetts and New York , after Massachusetts rose its drinking age, revealed that the average, self reported, daily alcohol consumption in Massachusetts did not decline in comparison with New York , as stated in an article written by Dr. J. Hanson of the State University of New York at Potsdam. There has been more than one occasion, in my life, were I have consumed alcohol, however legally I should not have. During those times I was fully aware of what I was doing, why I was doing it, and the repercussions of what I was doing. Now that I am eighteen years old I believe that I am even more capable to handle my alcohol consumption, without having any repercussions what so ever. This, I believe, is because I am now an adult and I can make my own adult, educated decisions.
The United States once did have a legal drinking age of eighteen, yet some people believed that raising this age would be beneficial to the country; this however is not so. As stated by Dr. David J Hanson “Comparisons of drinking before and after the passage of raised minimum age legislation have generally revealed little impact upon behavior.” Almost every European and Asian country on this planet has a legal drinking age of eighteen and this lower drinking age has been very efficient in those countries. In countries such age Great Britain, France, Italy, Japan, and China there are few drunk driving incidents, and the incidents that do occur involved people that were significantly over the legal drinking age. If a legal drinking age of eighteen has worked very well in other industrial nations, I do not see why the United States should not be part of this. The people of the United States are intelligent and bright people who are more than capable of making decisions for themselves by the time that they are eighteen years old. Moreover, other counties have certain circumstances regarding drinking alcohol, such as convenient and efficient transportation systems that allow the people to not have to depend on cars as a way of getting home after a night of drinking. If the United States implements a better transportation system, the number of alcohol related accidents would most likely significantly decrease. In other words, it is not that the people are too young to drink, but it is that they have no way of getting themselves home after they drink without driving.
The United States is known for a country that leads the way in cutting edge thinking, yet we still have medieval thinking when it comes to alcohol consumption. Young people at the age of eighteen should be receiving more credit for what they are capable of doing. Eighteen year olds are given a certain number of responsibilities, yet they are not yet entrusted with drinking alcohol, which should not be so. If you are considered an adult at eighteen, then there should not be any restrictions for those eighteen year old adults; restrictions of alcohol in particular.