To: President Donald Trump, The United States House of Representatives, and The United States Senate
Change the drinking age back to 18, the age of adulthood
The legal age to be an adult is 18 in all cases except for drinking. Changing the drinking age has not deterred drinking, it only pushed it underground and promotes binge drinking.
Why is this important?
In 1984 most states changed the legal drinking age to 21 to not lose out on federal highway funds. Twenty eight years have passed and it is time to revisit the issue. It seems that a consequence of changing the drinking age to 21 is that underage drinking has been pushed underground and binge drinking is now on the rise. Kids “pregame” (drink as much as they can), before they go out because they can’t drink once they get to where they are going. When the drinking age was 18, there was no urgency to drink mass quantities before going out. College students are going to drink no matter what the law says, but now they are doing it undercover and unsupervised. Kids are not learning how to drink socially, they are learning how to binge drink and are dying of alcohol poisoning. Alcohol will always be in our society, we have the opportunity to teach kids how to drink responsibly instead of forcing them underground.
Eighteen year olds are treated as adults in most all other cases: they can marry, males must register for the draft, they
can smoke vote and be charged as an adult in the court system. They only thing they can’t do is purchase and drink alcohol. If society has decided that 18 year olds are adults, they should also be allowed to drink.
Kids are also getting blemishes on their records making it harder to get into college and more difficult to be hired into the work force. In many colleges they can be kicked out if they are caught drinking.
The law also costs parents and kids financially, legal and court fees for underage drinking tickets can run hundreds to thousands of dollars.
We hear that there are fewer alcohol related car accidents now, many believe that is due to the fact that drinking and driving is no longer tolerated at any age. Kids take turns being the designated driver or get in a taxi. In that respect they are much smarter than previous generations.
It seems that we spend a lot of time, effort and money trying to make sure kids under 21 don’t drink. It would be more constructive to to educate the public about the problems of binge drinking. Changing the drinking age to 21 has not deterred drinking and has triggered many other problems.