Drinking Age That Makes Sense

President Obama has the important ability of placing issues in the broader context of the world.  What happens too often is individual issues get scrutinized without the discussion of the big picture.  Even when the big picture is considered it is only the big picture of that particular issue.  You see this with Obama when talking about off shore drilling, the War in Iraq, torture, Iran, as well as many other issues.  He makes his argument and effectively communicates how it fits in with everything else in the world.  I would love to see America take this approach with the drinking age.

Advocates of the drinking age could give you statistics all day as to why it should stay where it is.  Each statistic individually is hard to dispute.  You can swim around in numbers all day that support their cause.    While believers in the 18 year old drinking age have stats too, it is hard to believe them winning an argument over numbers.  Where their argument holds the most water is the drinking ages place in the big picture.  The big picture will greatly sway the debate towards a lower drinking age.

The big picture reveals how a 21 year old drinking age just does not make sense.  It implies that it is a bigger responsibility to drink than it is to vote, serve on a jury, or fight for this country.  That simply does not make sense.  You could swim around in numbers all day but that simply does not make sense.  Sure drinking may be a problem in this country but is the way to solve it by raising the legal age?  It is my belief that this simply changes the problems that need solving instead of actually solving anything. 

The problems created are binge drinking, the underground nature of drinking, and lack of knowledge of how to drink.  All three of these problems stem from the illicit nature of drinking for 18-21 year olds.  The underage drinker must drink secretly, drink quickly and drink without knowledge of how to do so.  On the issue of secrecy and underground drinking, teens are forced to drink from water bottles, mixed soda bottles or straight from liquor bottles.  This presents a couple of problems.  First the consumer does not have as clear a picture of how much alcohol they’ve ingested.  This is obviously a problem when it comes to alcohol poisoning.  Second, it makes enforcement nearly impossible.  The police simply cannot check every water bottle carried around by every potentially underage person.