Thomas Jefferson surely didn't envision the playground politics of today, where the federal government plays the role of the bully and the state government is the skinny kid who carries the bully's books just to keep his lunch money.
Today, the federal government manipulates the state government's right to determine the age of alcohol consumption by teasing the state with highway funding. Thomas Jefferson, may he roll in his grave, for our federal government abuses its power and, in the process, creates more allure for alcohol as our country blindly combats the forbidden fruit syndrome.
Our constitutional rights as adults are lessened by our federal government's assumption that young adults need governmental intervention in their use of alcohol. Our federal government's construction of the National Drinking Act of 1984 mandates all states to increase the minimum purchase and possession age of alcohol to 21, and the Federal Highway Act declares if a state government chooses not to conform to this 1984 act the state faces reduction in highway funding. This federal government manipulation creates a situation in which adults' rights are denied and consequently millions of Americans relentlessly disrespect our laws on a near-weekly basis.
Our government cannot slap a law on its people and expect we will automatically abide. Our government must remember we are not puppets but people. If our goal is to curb overindulgence, we must integrate alcohol into our youths' lives and teach our children about alcohol just as we would teach them multiplication tables.
Today, our system turns otherwise good young adults into a bunch of Al Capones, echoing the failures of The Great Experiment of Prohibition. We must move the underground into the daylight. We are driving young Americans to lie to their parents; we are driving the creation of fake identification cards and we are driving our youth to treat law enforcement as their enemy. The more we push our young people into crowded basements or desolate fields to drink, instead of inviting them into a supervised public setting with trained personnel, the more we create an \us- against-them"" mentality. We are allowing alcohol to separate the youth from the wise as we couple our young adults with criminals.
The classic Adam and Eve phenomena applies to our drinking laws, the more forbidden the fruit, the more we want a bite. We must strip alcohol of its allure, which can be done by lowering or eliminating the drinking age.
Thus far, our drinking laws have been unsuccessful. The Community Anti-Drug Coalition of America has concluded the median age for experimental drinking to begin is 13 and a Health and Human Services study concluded that approximately two-thirds of drinking teenagers reported that they are able to buy their own alcohol. The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration found in a 2000 household survey that 9.7 million 12- to 20-year-olds drank in the previous month; 6.6 million were classified as binge drinkers. With nearly 10 million young Americans illegally drinking, we need to listen and we need to change the system.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimates minimum drinking age laws have saved 18,000 lives since 1975; yet the drinking age was 18 before the national standard was established in 1984, therefore how their estimation credits the new drinking laws is questionable. Furthermore, this NHTSA statistic doesn't account for the number of people who lead lives dictated by binge drinking and alcoholism as byproducts of our naive drinking laws. NHTSA needs to consider a more direct solution to our drunk driving problem, such as increasing the driving age instead of the drinking age.
The United States should explore the European model of befriending alcohol and driving. Europeans allow their youth an apprenticeship with alcohol and at the age of 16 or18 they have established a relationship with alcohol and therefore are socially prepared to independently manage. Similarly, most European counties require young adults to reach the age of 18 before being permitted to drive.
When adjusted to size proportionality, the auto fatality in England is nearly half of that in the United States. Our system doesn't work; the minimum drinking age at 21 has proven unrealistic and we need to change.
Our minimum drinking age of 21 doesn't just affect the underage drinkers; the bingers, the drunk drivers and the alcoholics produced by our laws ripple throughout our entire country. If the government is not working for the people, the people must change the government.
