Many people in the United States believe the age to buy and consume alcohol should be 21. I believe this is wrong; the age should be 18 because this is the age where the constitution becomes in full affect over you. Setting the drinking age to 21 is against the constitution because it is discriminating the age group of 18-20 years old. If you are under the constitution you must get all of your rights. There are about 5 countries with the drinking age at 21 including ours. There are 80+ countries with the drinking age at 18 and we never here about major alcohol related accidents. They are doing just fine with the drinking age at 18 I think we should be able to handle it too. If you are under the constitution then shouldn’t you get all of your right not just some of them? Plus at 18 you are given the rights to choose the destiny of someone’s life on jury duty. Males are force to join the draft and they could possibly go into war. You have the right to own a weapon. They also give us the right to select a trusted leader for our country. The government trusts them with their votes but they can’t treat them like full adults for another three whole years. I believe that the government should trust 18 year olds with the responsibilities of full adults and lower the drinking age.
Many colleges and universities disagree with the drinking age. For example President Richard Brodhead of Duke University believes that the drinking age being at 21 years of age is making the problem worse. If the age is changed to 18 years of age then it wouldn’t cause binge drinking. Binge drinking is drinking heavily for a short period of time. Most likely the weekends. When drinking is illegal to people 18 years and younger they will do it secretly so they won’t get caught. In an article in “Time Magazine” written by Jeffrey Kluger it was said that a freshmen at M.I.T drank himself to death. They chose to avoid a lawsuit by paying out $6 million to the parents who were going to sue. If the drinking age was 18 the freshmen wouldn’t have had to drink with the fear of being caught. With the age being 18 he could have drunk with adult supervision and it could have saved his life.
People object the idea of lowering the drink age to 18 because they are afraid of endangering the lives of other younger lives. Well maybe instead of telling us no you’re going to hurt someone they should teach us how to drink responsibly. People 18 years of age should be given a chance to be educated about alcohol not shunned from it. Instead of spending all of our government’s money on fighting against it why doesn’t the government spend money on educating it? Plus the cops are making a push to stop drunk driving so we shouldn’t have to worry about drunk drivers. When the MLDA was increased the drinking age to 21 the rate of traffic fatalities in the 1980’s decreased less than the European countries whose drinking ages are lower than 21. This is proving that the age which you drink at does not increase the fatalities on the road. It also shows that 18 year olds drink more responsibly than 21 year olds. Also when moving the MLDA to 21 it shifted the risk of accidents from teenagers to the younger adults proving that anyone will get hurt if they do not drink responsible.

Another reason to lower the drinking age is teens don’t want to get caught by their parents so they will drive home or to their dorms or wherever to avoid getting caught weather it’s by their parents of the police. If the age was lowered they wouldn’t have to avoid being caught because it is perfectly legal. So that will also reduce the number of fatalities by teen driving. In some cases there are those kids who do illegal things like drink and do drugs to rebel against the law. With lowering the drinking age it will not let them get the thrill of being a rebel and they will drink moderate amount. With drinking at a younger age it makes it a normalized activity and it will lessen the number of kids who do it for the thrill of law breaking or simply trying to show their maturity in front of other kids or adults.
So is it that they are too immature for drinking or is it that they aren’t educated enough? Everyone is saying no, no, no but they are only looking at the negatives. If you look at the whole picture it makes more sense to lower the drinking age. So I shall leave you with this, a quote from Robert Marley. “Just can't live that negative way...make way for the positive day!”