In response to the opinion piece Drinking Age should be upheld, which argues that the drinking age in this country should be kept at the current age of 21; I would like to respond by advocating that the people in this nation would be better off if the drinking age is lowered to the age of 18.
People are going to drink at parties no matter how many laws are passed and how many lectures we have to listen to from our teachers and our parents. Those who oppose lowering the drinking age are blind to that sad yet true fact that as long as there are the methods to get alcohol, through legal and sometimes illegal means, people are going to consume it. People want to drink, not because the taste is pleasant, but because we want to fit in while we are at college.
Lowering the drinking age would allow for all college students to consume alcohol in a safer manner. College students aren’t stupid. I think that in the contrary they are very smart and innovative. But no matter how hard we try to act in a safe and responsible manner, accidents happen and problems arise especially in the midst of a large and loud party.
However, if the drinking age is lowered to 18, college students can then legally socialize and drink with their friends and their buddies in bars and in restaurants.
There would be no need to ever be consuming alcohol in the basement of a friend’s apartment. Instead, we could drink in a bar where the bartender can be present in case something bad happens or if someone looks like they’re drinking too much. Personally, I would much rather have my friends legally drink in a bar or a restaurant then in a basement of a someone’s house where anything can go wrong, and medical help will be very hard to come by.
However, we cannot continue to sit here and pretend that we are going to solve this issue just by passing more laws in this country. This problem of binge drinking and getting excessively drunk is a social issue, and we have tried many times in the past to stop bad social behaviors by passing all kinds of new laws and resolutions and putting into effect new regulations. But, nothing positive ever comes as a result of these types of actions.
The problems we face with regards to excessive alcohol consumption and misuse is not a governmental problem, so therefore government alone cannot solve this problem. College students today are more resourceful then they have ever been, and if all college students have the resources to stay safe and to make sure we act in a manner that keeps other people safe, whether it be out on the road or with our friends, we can be safe. But if we can’t consume beer in a place where we can have the bar tenders and waiters monitoring the amount of drinks we’ve had and if our parents and friends can’t drive us back home after we had drank too much; then what good is there in having a law to try to combat the problem of alcohol misuse if that same law only leads to more alcohol misuse?
Lowering the drinking age to 18 is the only way to ensure that college students remain safe while drinking. For when we tried to ban alcohol nearly 100 years ago for all, we had learned from experience that banning alcohol does not solve our social issues that we have as a nation. So why do we continue to ban alcohol for some despite the fact that the lessons that we have learned tell us it doesn’t work? We cannot solve the problems that we have if we keep trying to implement the same solutions over and over again that do not work. It’s basic common sense. Lowering the drinking age is good for college students, good for our friends, and good for us all.
By Bobby Berriault, SGA Senator
