The legal drinking age in the United States has traveled on a very bumpy road since the twentieth century. After the end of prohibition in 1933, you had to be twenty-one to enter a bar. Years later during the Vietnam War, the age was back down to eighteen. By the late 1970’s it was up to each state to decide which age they thought was best. Finally, in 1984, the government ordered all fifty states to raise the legal age to twenty-one years old, and since then the debate has been controversial with strong arguments on each side. Pros: The first argument in support of a lower drinking age is the idea that eighteen years old is the mark of adulthood. Most eighteen year-olds are just graduating from high school. An exciting time in their lives …show more content…
Mentioned earlier, several young adults are entering college at this point in their lives. John McCardell Jr, former president of Middlebury College, founded Choose Responsibly, a non-profit organization that promotes awareness of the dangers of excessive drinking and reckless alcohol consumption by young adults. His main goal is to lower the minimum drinking age by spreading awareness to the public (McCardell). He understands that the pressure to drink in college is very prevalent, and when we restrict eighteen to twenty year olds from drinking, it then creates the risk of an unsafe environment. This group is not allowed to drink in bars, restaurants, and other licensed locations, but this doesn’t stop them from drinking. Instead young adults move underground to house parties, basements, fraternities and several other unsafe settings. This, in turn, makes binge drinking and the resulting behavior a much harder situation to manage. According to the Annual Review of Public Health, alcohol annually contributes to some 1,700 deaths, 599,000 injuries, and 97,000 cases of sexual assault among college students and ninety percent of the alcohol consumed by eighteen to twenty year olds is an occurrence of heavy drinking. Pushing drinking behind closed doors, under no watch from parents, residence hall staff, or responsible supervision, is not only putting the drinker at greater risk, but the lives of