With a couple recent birthdays in my family I began to think about the
drinking age for alcohol. One of my nephews turned 21 recently and my own
birthday happened within the last month. My thought process began with
his downplaying of his milestone birthday. He attends a college that is
dry and he probably was not even going to go to a bar or restaurant to have a
beer or a drink.
It is a big contrast to
my own 21st birthday, where my fraternity brothers’ whole point was to get me
drunk. Needless to say they did succeed in that aspect. These are two
very different ways to look at the milestone 21st birthday. I am not
saying which is better or even more correct, that is up to your own discretion.
In a review of the drinking age around the globe a person quickly finds that
the United States is in the minority with the 21 year old drinking age.
The vast majority of countries are around 18 years old. Is this a good
thing? Our voted in leaders of our country believe so. I am not
convinced. The United States (US) is one of the leading countries for
alcoholics, binge drinkers and general alcohol abuse. Countries that have
much younger drinking ages have a lesser degree of all of these
instances.
So this leads one to believe that by delaying the drinking age to 21 we in
the US are actually harming our young adults. Since we delay the
important day of drinking to such a late age we actually make it overly
important. I believe if we would look at going back to 18 we would be
doing our young adults a favor. Especially since at 18 our young adults
can join the armed services, vote and smoke. My biggest concern is the
denying of the young adults that have decided to protect our country the right
to drink. I believe that if they are old enough to die for our country
they are old enough to drink.
Our 21 year old drinking age really does not do what it is meant to do,
which is prevent under- age drinking. The overwhelming majority of adults
have drunk before their 21st birthday. I am not saying that every adult
had a binge drinking event before turning 21, but a good amount of us
have. Especially those of us that have gone away to college, the rule of
"out of sight out of mind" applied to many of us. Meaning we
are away from home, we were more likely to give into peer pressure.
As I have learned currently, many teenagers do not even wait to go away to
college to drink. The rate of high school and tragically even junior high
school age kids is on the increase. Which I believe is due to the high
drinking age we have. In countries with lower ages they wean their youth
onto alcohol slowly and with reverence. They downplay the importance of
drinking alcohol and make it a common occurrence to their youth.
I am not saying that the countries that have lower drinking ages are
perfect. They do have problems with youth drinking under age and binge
drinking, but they have lower occurrences than the US does. Needless to
say there is no perfect way to introduce our youth to drinking alcohol.
Even those of us that think we are being progressive and introducing our sons
or daughters to properly drinking alcohol can be wrong.
There are always those of us that are predisposed to abusing alcohol no
matter what age. There is no perfect age to set forth for a drinking age, but I
believe that a younger age than we have currently is a good thing.
So needless to say the debate continues and will be decided about the people
we elect to represent us in our government. Unfortunately I do not see a
change coming any time soon.
QC Beerguy
