Lowering Drinking Age

Lowering the Drinking Age: A Problem or a Solution? Why is it that 18 year old citizens, like myself, can legally obtain a driver's license, register to vote, be forced into jury duty or a draft, can be tried as an adult and even be put to death, but cannot buy and consume alcoholic beverages legally? It is hard for me to comprehend as a young American that we can be permitted or subjected to perform actions that affect the lives of other people, but we are not allowed to have the freedom of choice on an issue that directly involves one's own life. By setting the standard drinking age at 21, a taboo was placed on alcohol for young people. Perhaps by settling the standard drinking age to 18 young adults would no longer see alcohol as the forbidden
Colorado's Department of the Treasury announced in October of 1997, that Representative Ron Tupa of Boulder was to introduce a bill to legislation for the lowering of the state's drinking age to 18. Many of the local officials there felt that it was a "bad idea which would cost lives" (Miret). According to the article, the Colorado's State Treasurer's office claims that there has been many studies that show how the raising of the drinking age to 21 has "resulted in fewer teen- Cocco 2 age alcohol-related accidents" (Miret). However, other evidence suggests a different story. They are more alcohol-related accidents with people over the age of 21. A study of all 50 states and the District of Columbia found "a positive relationship between the purchase age and single-vehicle fatalities" (Hanson, "The Legal Drinking Age: Science vs. Ideology"). Thus, single-vehicle fatalities were found to be more frequent in those states with high purchase ages. Can anyone really say that as a result of rising the drinking age to 21 that these dilemmas such as accidents, intake, and desire has largely
"A comparison of college students attending schools in states that had maintained, for a period of at least ten years, a minimum drinking age of 21 with those in states that had similarly maintained minimum drinking ages below 21 revealed few differences in drinking problems" (Hanson, "The Legal Drinking Age: Science vs. Ideology"). For example, a large study of young people between ages of 16 and 19 in Massachusetts and New York after Massachusetts raised its drinking age revealed that "the average, self-reported daily alcohol consumption in Massachusetts did not decline in comparison with New York" (Hanson, "The Legal Drinking Age: Science vs. Ideology"). College students, young teens and drinking will always be inevitably associated with each other regardless of the circumstances or rules. So what is the point of conceiving and enforcing a policy that is already failed and is doomed to fail? Cocco 3 Administrations cannot stop alcohol abuse, but they cannot ignore it either. With the college administrations ignoring it with the hopes that it will go away is simply unaccepted and should not even be an