A young man who just turned eighteen finds he is being drafted. He and his friends enter a bar to have some final fun before they leave for a future that they may not return from. They walk up to the bar and ask for a drink. The bartender says that unless they are twenty-one he can not serve them. It is ridiculous that a man is old enough to go fight a war he does not understand, yet he can not have an alcoholic beverage before he does it. When a man is old enough to die in war he is old enough to drink alcohol.
This is the opinion of many young people in the United States today, and one that I totally agree with. The drinking age should be placed back to eighteen. The problem people say is that an eighteen year old man is not old enough to know when to say when. This argument could be used against drinking all together. Thousands of people are killed every month from dunk driving. Most of these drunks are people over the age of reason set up by the government. How does not letting people under twenty-one save lives? The answer is it does not.
If most of the drunks killing people are over twenty-one, this shows that the government needs to educate people more. This does not show that they should not allow adults of the age eighteen to drink alcoholic beverages. The government needs to educate all adults on the proper usage of alcohol. This would save more live than not allowing adults over the age of eighteen to drink.
A person is considered an adult at the age of eighteen by both the judiciary and military arms of the government. They should be seen as an adult by the rest of the government as well. They should be seen as having enough reason to drink and have fun. There will most definitely be a few who will abuse the privilege, but that is true with all ages, not just the eighteen to twenty year olds.