by azerty » 15 Jun 2014 06:55
My personal view? The American drinking age of 21 is frivolous simply because it's impossible to enforce and even more impossible to comprehend. Like Biggles said, 18 is the legal age for, well, everything, but having been given that sense of power and still being told that one little thing - alcohol - is off limits just doesn't click in a teenager's head. If anything, the fact that that one thing is singularly banned makes it all the more desirable. Regardless, I have friends who are 16 and 17 and still drink (or smoke or whatever) all the time, and they simply don't care when it becomes legal since they're doing it anyway. However, for those who do care when it becomes legal for them, the surge of liberty given at the age of 18 provides a sort of delusion that just because they have some new rights instantly means that they should have all of them. In response to this, the best option is simply to make this delusion a reality and lower the drinking age to 18 so that everything can be done in one fell swoop.
One final thought; a lot of people go out on their 21st birthday and party and drink a ton of alcohol just to celebrate their new right to ridiculous extremes (and also to get smashed which is fantastic), so what am I supposed to do on my 18th birthday to exaggerate my new rights? The best idea I can think of is to go register dozens of credit cards, max them all out by buying lots of guns and cigarettes, rent an expensive apartment, file lawsuits on everyone I don't like, then enlist in the army and sell everything one day later. Yeah... still not as much fun as getting hammered.