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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?
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