Drinking Age to 18

In the United States at age 18, a person is legally allowed to buy tobacco, vote, get married, enlist in the military, and work in a bar, among other privileges. However, in most states, he cannot legally drink champagne at his own wedding or have a beer with his fellow comrades. 18 is the age of adulthood in the United States, and adults should have the right to make their own decisions about alcohol consumption. Turning 18 entails receiving the rights and responsibilities of adulthood, which involves making one’s own decisions and reaping the consequences of one’s own actions. It should not be up to the government to tell legal adults what they can or cannot put in their bodies, especially when alcohol itself is not dangerous unless consumed in extreme amounts. When the 18th Amendment was repealed – allowing alcohol once again to be sold and distributed – the federal government left this responsibility of choosing the drinking age to state governments. It was during this time that the majority of state governments democratically lowered the drinking age to 18. However, these states were later essentially bribed by Congress – which used fiscal blackmail and threatened to retract funding for highway construction – to pass the National Minimum Drinking Age Act, which forced all states to change their legal drinking age to 21. In the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, it is stated that no state shall "deprive any person of life, liberty, or property." If the Constitution clearly declares that the States cannot discriminate in any way that will deny a person his civil rights, why is the government allowing states to create another second-class citizen in the millions of people aged 18 to 21 unable to drink like the rest of the adults in the country? This demographic has been demoted on notions based solely on medical research; what’s next – that people with low IQs can’t vote? Some may claim that the purpose of a higher drinking age is