Drinking Age

When my dad turned 18, he immediately enlisted in the U.S. Army. He was deployed to Vietnam just four months after he turned 18. Back then the drinking age was 18. Since then, it has been raised to 21. If you can go fight a war for your country like my dad did when he was 18, why can’t you buy a case like he also did when he was 18? My dad has been retired from the Army for 20 years, but my brother who is 19 is in the Air Force, and his life is just as much at stake now as my dad’s was when he was in the military, but he can’t buy beer. I just don’t think that it makes sense at all. At 18, you are legally an adult and can choose the president of our country, but can’t even be holding an unopened beer without getting an MIP.

The reason that the government says the drinking age is 21 is because they say that alcohol damages your brain then on your 21st birthday then alcohol magically doesn’t damage it anymore. If you are 18 and can make your own decisions, then you should be able to drink if you want to. When kids turn 21, they are in college and away from home and their parents and are with all their friends. They usually go to the bars and drink large amounts of alcohol and a lot of times they can even die. AT KU, a student turned 21 and got too drunk and died after he passed out. If the age was 18, the parents could monitor their child better when they can legally drink, and the number of deaths would decrease. By the time kids would be in college, they would have already been drinking for about a year, and drinking at college wouldn’t be as big of a deal and there would be less alcohol related deaths