All Adults Should Be Allowed to Drink

First of all, I just want to state that I do not drink, nor am I anxiously waiting for the day when I'm old enough to legally get plastered. This isn't about some college chick wanting to get drunk legally, this is about civil liberties and solving problems in this country that are related to drinking.

Now, when you're 18, you're a legal adult. Once you turn 18, you are no longer your parents' legal property, you can make decisions for yourself. You can vote, you can buy porn, lottery tickets, and cigarettes. You don't need your parents' permission to do anything, except get married in the state of Pennsylvania. You're even old enough to join the military, and you're old enough to get drafted (if there was a draft). The only thing you can't do is buy or consume alcohol. At places like NU, you're not even allowed to be at parties where other people drink.

Why is this? How come at 18 the government trusts me to make my own decisions in regards to just about everything except my alcohol consumption?

Back in the 1970's, the Constitution was amended to lower the voting age to 18, because that was the age at which men could be drafted and forced to fight in Vietnam. They figured if they were gonna draft these guys, they should at least give them voting rights. So now they could get drafted, they could vote, but they couldn't drink.

Is that fair to you?

Civil liberties aside, there's a lot of other issues related to the drinking age, including public safety.

Take a college campus for example. You've got 18-20 year old students living and learning on the same campus as people 21 and older. On the average college campus, there are parties that involve drinking, but if there is drinking, a majority of students are excluded because if they were to be caught there, they could get in trouble. Of course, these rules don't always work, and people party with their friends anyway. Say Martin's best friend Sean is 21, and a lot of Sean's friends are 21-22 years old. Sean throws a Superbowl party, and since he and most of his friends can drink, he wants to serve alcohol at his party. So, what should happen? Should Martin just not go because there's going to be alcohol? Should he go anyway and risk getting suspended for being at a party where there's alcohol? Or should Sean not serve alcohol so his buddy can go legally?

Why put people in this dilema? In college, people under the drinking age mingle and party with people over the drinking age. Therefore, it makes more sense to just put the drinking age at 18, so that everyone on campus can drink legally.

Sadly, the drinking age also creates dangerous situations. If someone under the age of 21 drinks too much alcohol to the point where they need medical attention, that person or their friends are less likely to seek medical attention, especially when their college doesn't have a medical amnesty policy which prevents people from getting in trouble for underage drinking if they call for help. These policies may increase the number of people who get help when they need it, but there will always be people too afraid of getting in trouble.

If the drinking age was 18, anyone who needed medical attention for an alcohol-related condition would feel more comfortable calling for help.

Women under 18 also experience date rape due to alcohol. The situation: a 19 year-old college girl gets drunk, has sex in a drunken state, and then wants to press statutory rape charges. But if she does that, she'd have to admit she was drinking underage. That's gotte be a tough situation. Another situation: a 20 year-old girl has one or two drinks, but one of those drinks is roofied, and she is date-raped. If she were to press charges, she'd also have to admit to drinking underage. If the drinking age was 18, more date-rape victims would feel safe coming forward and pressing charges.

Yes, I know high school girls drink, and they do experience date-rape. However, they don't have to worry about getting expelled or suspended from school if they come forward, unless the rape happened on campus. But even if that did happen, the implications of being expelled or suspended from high school aren't as serious as being expelled from college.

Remember a while back when I mentioned 18+ shows had been banned? Part of that was to prevent underage drinking. People under 21 would to to 18+ shows, where alcohol was served to people old enough, and they would manage to get their hands on it. If the drinking age was 18, we wouldn't have any use for 21+ shows because anyone 18 and older could drink. There wouldn't be any concerns about making sure people under 21 weren't drinking. This would also means that all adults could go out and have a good time, not just 21 year-olds.

Now, I understand that many people turn 18 when they're still in high school. By my logic, that would mean that high school kids under 18 would have access to alcohol, right?

Wrong.

In high school, people under 18 do party with people over 18. This is true. However, 18 year-olds make up a small portion of a high school student body, this percentage is smaller than the percentage of 21+ year-olds on college campuses because most college kids turn either in before their senior year (as early as September of junior year) whereas high school kids turn 18 during their senior year. Also, with the exception of boarding schools, most high school kids don't live together, meaning most 18 year-olds don't live with kids under 18. Another thing to consider is that even if the drinking age was 18, if there was any underage drinking at a party, the parents would be blamed, not the host, and not the 18 year olds providing the alcohol. Besides, the age at which you can buy cigarettes is 18, but high schools don't allow smoking on school grounds, even for people who can legally smoke. Similarly, people wouldn't be allowed to drink in school.

If people could start drinking when they're 18, they can start drinking before college. It's very common for people to start drinking as soon as they start college, just because they have access and their parents aren't around to say they can't. They don't give a rat's ass about the school's alcohol policy, they drink because they're at college and they feel wild and free.

However, if those people could start drinking before they got to campus, things may be different. They'd have at least a month or so to drink, and by the time they got to campus they'd know how much it takes for them to get drunk, how it feels to be drunk, how to drink responsibly. These kids could legally have their first drinks at home, or with friends they've known for years, instead of around people they barely know.

I think if people were allowed a little experience with alcohol before moving to college, that would make a huge difference in college drinking behaviors.

In conclusion, all adults should be allowed to drink.