If there is one thing (another one!) that I still can’t understand, is why do we (young people full of happiness and hope) have to wait until our twenty first birthday to finally be allowed to do the party all night without any restrictions? I found this law was very weird and silly in the same time. In fact, did you notice that we were able to drive by ourselves at 16, to smoke and vote at 18, but not to drink up to 21, and consequently not to go to certain bars, night clubs and above all to Las Vegas! and as a fan of rhinestones and glitter of all kinds, I think this is absolutely an outrage to the young age, than preventing us from having fun, because we all know that it won’t be possible past our twenties! Ok, I may be a little over exaggerating, but this is obviously the truth, because suddenly we woke up one morning, married, with children, a very busy job, and a life totally inconsistent with fun.
Therefore, should we low the age of allowance to alcohol from 21 to at least 18? Some time ago, I watched a very interesting Dr Phil’s show about this major issue. Indeed, as usual, some people were pro, and some were con. But how do you find the reason why you should say yes or no to alcohol under 21? Is there an accurate motive you should consider to be in one side of the debate? Personally, even if I don’t like drinking alcohol, I would even though say that the government should low the age to 18. Why? because I frankly believe that this would be a better opportunity to help teenagers becoming more mature with their decisions, and their life in general. For instance, do you really think being able to drink at 21 is helpful for the community? I just think this is a time bomb for what is going to happen when the D-day will arrive, slowly, but not less intensively! In fact, people will be so excited in the idea that they suddenly do whatever they want with alcohol, that they won’t restrict themselves, and will just plunge into an ocean of drunkenness and dangerous attitudes for the society and themselves (like driving while being drunk, which can sometimes go until death…). In the contrary, I think that 18 years old is the perfect age to allow young people to drink. Because in the US, I have the strong impression that people are responsible enough to know if they can drink or not, and what will be the consequences of their acts. Moreover, I would say that 18 year old people are much wiser than 21 year old people, because the younger you are, the less rebellious you feel, even if almost all of us passed by the period of “the ungrateful age”, when we wanted to kill anyone, because we were angry with life, and we didn’t like people and ourselves for many many unfounded reasons (at almost 19, I still feel this impression, but I still remain quiet, don’t worry!). However, like I said, because we are younger, we still have less reasons to get drunk than in 21, owing to the fact that we had less bad experiments of life, so less reasons to do nonsense things…(at least, it is such the way I perceived it, but everyone is different…).
Furthermore, another grounds why I think that 21 is too old to drink alcohol, is of course, if you compare with other countries, for example Europe countries, such as France. As a matter of fact, in my country, you can drive by yourself at 18, vote at the same age, but you can smoke and drink at 16, which would be pretty well considered by french teenagers, and much more envied from young US people, I guess! In fact, that is cool because we feel that we are really perceived as adults from our ancestors, i.e. the elderly society! (private joke). Nevertheless, we can also see the difference on the roads. In fact, it’d seem, according to statistics, that european people die more of alcohol on the roads than US people. Would that want to say that we, european people, are more irresponsible than you, US people? It might seem than, in fact, we could be a little bit crazier than you, but you have to consider also all the parametric, such as the size of the roads (much smaller in Europe), the traffic, etc.
But, anyway, we all know, that even if US people seem very quiet and wise, they also are small secretive ones! they, like european, like in any place in the world, we all like to break the rules, and don’t prevent ourselves from finding a mean to buy some alcohol via someone, or even buy some fake IDs to get in the most prestigious night clubs of hollywood forbidden under 21 (in fact, the first time I went to a club here, I understood that people felt so coerced during the day, that they took advantage of clubbing to compensate their lack of exhibitionism and exhilaration !). Therefore, we all know the tips to fight against a world reigned by a lot of very strict rules, and we all have our law prohibitions, depending on where we are from. Therefore, the accurate question could be : should we drink under or outlaw?
