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To many Americans, the idea of lowering the drinking age is preposterous, but in most other countries, it is common for 16 or 18-year-olds to legally consume alcohol. I believe that the drinking age should be lowered to 18 years old and that if America were to change it, it would take some time to see the positive effects but in the long run, there would be fewer cases of dangerous alcohol consumption.

Alcohol has become somewhat of a big deal in recent years. According to the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, drinking rates are up 17% since 2005. This is because since prohibition in the 1920s, alcohol has become an escape, and that philosophy has only grown since. By turning alcohol into something you can’t do or shouldn’t do, the government had created a culture of people trying to do everything the law said they can’t. During the time of prohibition, the amount of alcohol consumed skyrocketed, especially amongst children and women. After the failed attempt of prohibition, the law went back to 18 and up and then was raised to 21 in 1984, but it was already too late, alcohol had a new image and now we deal with constant underage drinking and drinking at dangerous levels. The only thing that’s changed in the drinking culture of America is that we do it even more often. We can fix this though! If we lower the drinking age, we can slowly but surely change our perspective of alcohol.

In America, turning 18 means you’re an adult. It means you can vote, fight in a war, adopt children, buy a gun and many Americans coming onto that age consider alcohol to be on that list. According to the 2015 national survey on drug use and health, about 7.7 million Americans between the age of 12 and 20 report current alcohol consumption, so basically, underage drinking is inevitable. In most other countries, children have learned how to drink responsibly by the time they’re 18 and have already started consuming safe amounts of alcohol with the support and guiding of the parents so that their children won’t be learning it the hard way, years later at a college party where there will be no supervision or safe amounts. By lowering the legal drinking age, we allow for alcohol to become a part of society that is accepted and no longer taboo or dramatized. The more something is criminalized, the more it will prompt youth to abuse it, but when it is accepted as a part of society from a younger age, it will encourage parents to place their own rules on it and create safer guidelines.

It seems like a really simple idea, “raise the legal drinking age in order to reduce underage drinking” but, unfortunately, it’s never that simple. In order to take charge of the issue of underage drinking, we need to decriminalize alcohol and then move forward by not just saying don’t drink because of its bad, but instead to really teach the youth about how they can consume alcohol safely.