Loyola Greyhound

Issue date: 9/30/08 Section: Opinion

Imagine it's the night right before your eighteenth birthday. It's 11:59 - you only have one more minute to endure, and then you will be 18 years old; you'll be an adult; no longer will anyone look down on you as a kid. When the clock strikes midnight, everything has changed. At 18, you are now an adult. You are now your own person, and you're about to embark on a four-year journey toward growth and self-discovery.

Oh, and I almost forgot the best part. You're allowed to drink. Not drink as in open up a bottle of Pepsi without legal consequence - drink as in the law permits 18-year-old individuals to consume alcohol. What?! There is a God.

As the law stands today, what is previously described is a fantastical situation. People (for the most part) know that to engage in any sort of alcoholic consumption legally, turning 21 years old is a necessary prerequisite. Recently, however, an organization composed of chancellors and presidents of colleges and universities nationwide have begun reexamining the effectiveness of a legal drinking age being set at 21. This group, known as the Amethyst Initiative, believes that the drinking age should be reconsidered in light of the problems and issues created by a new generation of college-aged binge drinkers. Although the group proposes no specific lower (or higher) drinking age, one could extrapolate the central argument: lower the legal drinking age to 18, and, for younger drinkers, provide an education that is more efficacious in preventing irresponsible consumption of alcohol.

Can you imagine the hours of incessant debate over this topic? Prodding and arguing and dictating and berating, and all because some people want to pop open a beer three years earlier than other people think they should legally be allowed to. People would turn blue in the face! "Violet, you're turning violet, Violet!"

Ironically enough, the drinking age isn't actually 21 (technically). According to the National Minimum Drinking Age Act of 1984, states have to enforce the age of 21 as the minimum for buying and publicly possessing or consuming alcohol. But, with no penalty in place aiding the enforcement of such a law, why would anyone follow it? This is why, subsequently, the Federal Aid Highway Act was passed; if states do not enforce the minimum age of 21, then states fall victim to a 10 percent decrease in the monies allotted to them by the federal government for the construction and repair of highways and roads. So - technically - states could tell the federal government to kiss off, lower the drinking age to 18 and then never receive money for roads.

Continued...

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