en and twenty-one are more likely than any other age group to use alternative methods when hosting a social event to try to prevent their guest from drinking and driving. Drivers sixteen to twenty involved in fetal crashes and were intoxicated dropped from 47% in 1985 to 13% in 1994. That is the largest decrease then any other age group. The decrease in drinking and driving problems are the result of many factors and not just the rise in purchase age.Education and communication is the reason that people under twenty-one are becoming more mature. According to CQ Researcher, “The drop in death from drunk driving stems from better education, not drinking age.” MADD statistics show that high school seniors who reported any alcohol use in the prior month fell from a peak of 72% in 1980 to 51% in 1993. With the focus on education about safe drinking instead of restriction, many problems would be averted. American teenagers, unlike European teens, would learn to drink gradually, safely and in moderation. Though the per capita consumption of alcohol in countries like France, Spain and Portugal is greater than in the US, the rate of alcoholism and alcohol abuse is lower. This comes from educated and gradual drinking. Young people learn to regard moderate drinking as an enjoyable social activity rather than as something they have to sneak around to do. Without this kind of system, college is viewed as a kind of liberation. If eighteen year olds do not have legal access to even a beer in a public place, they are ill equipped to deal with the responsibilities that come with drinking when they do have the right. Why is the age set at twenty-one then? In 1981 President Regan signed the Legal Age of Consumption Act, which strongly encouraged states to raise the legal drinking age to 21 by denying the 10% of highway funds for the states that didn’t comply. The Tenth amendment states “the powers not delegated to the United States...
