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. 

The issue of binge drinking, to me, is the most frightening.  Teens often have a limited amount of time in which to drink, whether it is because parents are coming home or because they are going out to the high school football game.  This has led teens to ingest large amounts of alcohol in short periods of time, which obviously is not healthy.  Drinking games have been created to assist in this.  At high school parties it is not unusual to see a seemingly fun game force many teens to drink more than they normally would.  Drinking games can be innocent fun when the people involved know how to drink.  The 21 year old drinking age, however, prevents teens from learning how to drink safely. 

Too many households either do not have a conversation about drinking or the conversation doesn’t go any further than don’t drink.  If a conversation existed there is no telling how many alcohol poisoning deaths would be avoided each year.  The policies about drinking need to be focused on creating a conversation rather than prohibition for young adults.  While lowering the drinking age alone won’t create the conversation it is a necessary step towards the conversation.  The drinking age needs to be still in the realm where government has most control of its people; at primary education age.  If the drinking age is 18, the government can take responsibility for more effective education in public high schools throughout the country.  While alcohol programs currently exist in colleges, they only are on the minds of students until the course is finished.  The student spends a short amount of time doing an online course and immediately forgets about it.  A program that creates a discussion about drinking throughout high school would be more effective.  This ensures longer exposure the dangers of drinking from a younger age and would reach a larger audience than the current college programs.  For this type of program to work, the drinking age must be 18.  It would make no sense to educate kids about drinking and then tell them they cannot drink for 3 more years after finishing the course. 

There are many reasons to support lowering the drinking.  Many of them are presented in this article.  The one that should get most discussion is the fact that the law simply does not make sense.  How can the government tell someone who has voted for the president, served in a war, and served on a jury that they cannot have a drink.  All the stats that advocates of the 21 year old drinking age present are very real and very scary.  By writing this I am not disputing the seriousness of drunk driving.  I am simply suggesting that the solution may not come from the law and order segment of our government but rather from the education segment of our government.