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The Final Revelation of Adulthood


     It was early in the morning of February 20, and I was in bed asleep. A blare of celestial trumpets startled me awake, and a strange light shone down from the western side of my room. A voice, at once authoritative and loving, thundered: "My son, you may now Drink Responsibly." With that, the finger of God touched me, and the power to Know When To Say When was conveyed to me.

     All right, there are some of you out there who are saying that this didn't happen. You are quite right. My twenty-first birthday came in the normal way, and I didn't feel much smarter nor did a sudden realization of the ability to drink responsibly strike me at any point during the day. That's what I think the people who back the law believe happens. It doesn't. People of eighteen are, for the most part, as morally and responsibly developed as they ever will be.

     Other reasons to keep alcohol out of the hands of the eighteen-to-twenty-one year old crowd are offered by supporters of the current law. One ready objection is that is will curb drinking and driving. I'm sure it does just that. So would making it illegal for left-handed people to drink. Cutting down on the numbers of people legally eligible to drink will cut down the number of those that drink legally, and that might cut down drunk drivers, assuming that drunk drivers drink legally, which is a big assumption to make anyway. Even if it is statistically feasible, does that make the drinking age just? As a parting shot to the drunk driver rationalization of the drinking\ age, I'd like to point out that the deadlier half of the term "drunk driver" is granted often at sixteen, and it would be even safer to make the driving age twenty-one than to keep the drinking age twenty-one.

     The drinking age of twenty-one is important to maintain the public morality of America, some critics claim. How absurd. The law maintaining the drinking age is only a reflection of the ideal public morality. A pale reflection at that. High school students, even under the age of eighteen, often drink heavily. The law does not affect the morality of the action, nor does it keep under-age drinkers from drinking. It puts on a brave front, certainly, but the ideal government role is not to legislate what is moral. Government legislation is generally supposed to keep us from hurting each other, and drinking in itself doesn't do much damage to others. The fact that drinking to excess damages the drinker is none of the government's concern, unless of course it chooses to outlaw alcohol again. Besides, the morality of drinking is not the question directly under fire. If morality is the reason that the drinking age was established at twenty-one, it is an ideal that has already been compromised by letting those over twenty-one drink.

     Destructive criticism is nice, but without something constructive to offer, there is no point to change any law anyway. So, other than offering a right and a better sense of equality for those between the ages of eighteen and twenty-one, there are several benefits of lowering the drinking age to eighteen.

     On a sociological and theoretical level, a lot of confusion abounds in the nation's youth because our culture has no set rites of adulthood. Indeed, the rights of adulthood are parcelled out. Driving and dropping out at sixteen; voting, suing, selective service, and even sex at eighteen; but drinking is forbidden until twenty-one--at what point is a youth really an adult? Arguments can be made to raise or lower any or all of them, but for the sake of tradition and simplicity, I am merely in favor of limiting the process instead of continuing to draw it out over a span of five years.

     If the theoretical and abstract potential benefits are not good enough, I can offer a couple of concrete "goods". The youths between these ages would become consumers, and the customers would be welcome to taverns and breweries. All of those beers and bottles of wine sold are an increased tax base--more money going into treasuries, and it isn't the result of a tax increase at all. No one would have to pay one percent more on a house or point five percent more at the grocery store counter. Granted, this is a less idealistic and high-faluting than a moral argument, but its results are visible.

     The current drinking age makes no sense. I cannot even fathom why it was fashionable at one time to create it as the last frontier of maturation. Teenagers in some states can be married at sixteen, a full five years before they are allowed to drink. If we can grant them the ability to make a decision of that importance, a decision that will affect them for the rest of their lives, shouldn't we grant eighteen year olds the right to make a decision that will in all probability only affect them for a few hours?