The Best Age to Legalize Drinking

With the minimum drinking age set at 21 years old, many teens and young adults have argued the unfairness of the law. If you're old enough to vote for the next president of the United States and old enough to join the military and fight for our country why are you not old enough to have a drink of alcohol?

On the surface it sounds like a valid argument. At the age of 18 young adults are legal to live their life as they choose no matter what their parents say. However, there are specific reasons why young adults have to wait until the age of 21 before they can legally take a drink of alcohol. Let's take a look at these reasons.

Up until the late 1960s, with a few exceptions, the drinking age had been 21 years old. Many states started experimenting with lowering their drinking age to 18. However, it became obvious very quickly the error of that change. The burden then fell to the states to provide valid statistics to prove why the drinking age needed to be changed back to age 21.

The statistics showed that there were more highway deaths of teens when the drinking age was lowered to age 18. Teens in this age group, from age 18 to 20, did not have the maturity needed to understand the consequences of drinking and driving. At that point lawmakers worked at changing the drinking age back to 21. It was not done all at once, but rather changed over a period of time. When the drinking age finally reached 21 years of age again, statistics showed that there was a significant decrease in highway deaths from teen drinking and driving.

If you translate the number of accidents that have been avoided by the change in drinking age into lives saved, the number is staggering. Over the last 25 years approximately 21,000 teenagers’ lives have been saved. I'm sure most parents will agree that that number is sufficient proof enough for the change, even if teenagers and young adults don't agree.

In adolescence, the brain does not stop developing until around the time a person reaches 20 years of age. One of the last regions of the brain to mature involves the ability to assess situations and make complex judgments. This is the reason why so many young people make poor choices in their teen years. While in the early years of life the human brain has the capacity for more memory and learning, it does not have the maturity to use that knowledge wisely. If you couple that with a teen’s innate curiosity and desire to take risks, it can be a recipe for disaster if alcohol is also present.

Further studies also show that there is more potential for alcoholism later in life the earlier a teen starts drinking. Although most people think of alcoholism as being a problem for adults, the pattern of behavior begins early on. The younger the child is when they start to drink alcohol the more likely they will continue to drink and abuse alcohol.

While an adult may have a glass of wine with dinner, or a beer or two after mowing the lawn, a teenager doesn't view having a drink of alcohol the same way. If a teen is engaging in alcohol use, the sole purpose of doing so is usually to get drunk.