Anne Wei
Copy Editor
There is no point to the drinking age. Nobody follows it.
Sure, some clubs check IDs before passing out drinks and stores check before selling alcohol, but it’s easy enough to lie, get a fake ID or get someone else to buy alcohol for you. Some silly law about not being able to drink until one is 21 isn’t going to stop the average teenager from drinking, especially when it’s not harshly enforced.
Honestly, how many people do you know who have never drank a drop of alcohol before and suddenly become an alcoholic or completely change their lifestyle the minute they turn 21 because now it’s legal for them to do so?
If authorities lower the drinking age, say to 18, it wouldn’t make a difference to anyone. Although some kids between the ages of 18 and 21 would go out and drink, it wouldn’t be any more or any less than they are doing right now. It’d just be legal.
Maybe some kids who wouldn’t usually drink would just try it because they could, but they wouldn’t keep it up. If they hadn’t drank before, there was probably a reason for their refusal, deeper than their need to abide by the law; most wouldn’t just forget it because drinking would be legal.
Besides, the adult brain is fully developed by the time one turns 18. Not 21. If a person is a legal adult and can vote by the time they’re 18, I think they can decide how much they want to drink and control themselves. Every other right is given to teenagers when they turn 18; why not the right to drink?
If they can’t decide for themselves by the time they’re 18, then they shouldn’t be allowed to vote, have a driver’s license, get married and sign their own contracts since all those rights require big decisions. How is the choice to drink any different from those?
Yes, maybe people will learn more as they get older and learn more about the dangers of drinking, but these dangers have also been drilled into their minds since grade school with DARE. They’re already aware.
By the time people are 18, they’ve probably already grown immune to the warnings and don’t heed them anymore. If anything, another three years of adults lecturing them about drinking will just make them even deafer to the advice.
Lowering the drinking age would barely affect one’s choice to drink. Because, ultimately, that’s what it is: a choice.
The law isn’t the main reason, though it maybe an afterthought, that people choose to drink or not, and it therefore doesn’t matter at what age it’s set.
