Should the drinking age be lowered?

I accept.

Pro's case

C.1 Dangerous environment

I contest Pro's claim that 18 year olds are children. 18-20 year olds are not children. It's the age at which you can join the military, be tried as an adult, marry, amongst other things. Most highschoolers graduate at 18. 18 is in fact the age we can most clearly call someone an adult.

I'll address Pro's claim that nightclubs and bars are not safe environments anyway. 1) Self-autonomy: It is a fundamental right for adults to expose themselves to harmful environments. We allow 18 year olds to join the military after all. It's absurd to say bars and nightclubs are too dangerous for 18-20 year olds while also saying military combat is not. 2) Pro doesn't argue how these are dangerous environments. Alchohol can lead to fighting but bars and nightclubs are controlled supervised areas. Can Pro at least provide some statistics? 3) The U.S. is not a nanny state--or shouldn't be. There are plenty of harmful situations the government lets people get into simply because the state has no right to restrict a persons own autonomy unless necessary.

C.2 Medically irresponsible

As stated, the U.S. is not a nanny state so the simple fact of something being unhealthy is in no way an argument against banning its use for individuals.

Pro's own sources states that it was found in a meta-study with the drinking age and its association to health and social problems that "72% of the studies found no statistically significant relationship".

It's considered unethical to supply alchohal to those under the drinking age so experimental trials have to be conducted with animals. This means the research is speculative as to the applications to humans. The research also found (with animals) that "the adolescent brain is less impaired in motor skill control than the adult brain. That is, the adolescent brain maintains a higher level of balance, reaction time, and hand eye coordination while under the same level of impairment as an adult brain." This means that adolescents actually might function better while drunk. http://www.chooseresponsibility.org...

The adolecent brain extends till the age of 25. If we follow Pro's argument we should be raising the drinking age to that age. http://www.chooseresponsibility.org...

We should be advising responsibility, not trying to ban all use of alchohal under 21 because that makes it worse in a few ways. Binge drinking is unhealthy and a major cause of addiction and makeing alchohal illegal is a major cause of binge drinking since teens want to make the most of the times when they get alchohal. Raising the drinking age has actually caused more abusive drinking amongst those under age. http://www2.potsdam.edu...


C.3 Responsibility

Pro's flat out wrong that 21 is the age where people gain most responsibility in the U.S. At 18 the government deems us old enough to:

Join the military without parental consent http://www.military.com...
Recieve the death penalty http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org...
Vote http://democracyday.com...
Marry without parental/guardian consent http://marriage.about.com...
Serve as a juror http://www.uscourts.gov...
Gain legal indepdence from parents
Make a contract
Rent an apratment
Buy a car http://education.occourts.org...; http://drinkingage.procon.org...;
Age you can buy fire arms in many states http://smartgunlaws.org...

It's also the age people tend to make transition from high school to college.

At 21 according to Pro:

Adopt a child
Buy a hand gun
Gamble in most states
Rent a care for most companies (you can buy cars at 18)
Run for president (uh, no. You have to be 35) http://usgovinfo.about.com...

So Pro asks, "Why should drinking be any lower, when its just as big a resposiblitly as most things shown above?" If the drinking age is determined according to the responsibilites given to us by age, then we uniquivocally must change it to 18, not 21.


C.4 Maturity

18 is the age we push an enormous amount of responsibility on people. It doesn't make any sense that this means we shouldn't let them have a drink as well. 18 is the age we become legally independent. The age of majority should be the age at which persons can have a drink.

C.5 16/17 year olds

16 and 17 year olds already drink and there's no stopping that. Moreover, if we follow this logic, we could say the drinking age should be 23 so 18-20 year olds won't drink. If 18 is the age of adulthood, it's irrelevant what younger teens will do. Binge drinking is caused by alchohal being illegal since those who can't get it all the time tend not to drink in moderation when they do have it. The drinking age fails to stop underage drinking and just pushes it into uncontrolled and dangerous environments.


I forgot I was going somewhere tonight so I'll add more next round.

Extend.