Is it right to grant eighteen-year-olds all of these privileges and responsibilities, and to restrict them from drinking alcohol? If eighteen-year-olds don’t have the discretion to drink responsibly, then how could they possibly handle the responsibilities and privileges that adults have? I believe that eighteen-year-olds do have the ability to handle the freedoms and responsibilities of being an adult, which should include the privilege to drink alcohol. Many eighteen-year-olds are college freshmen, and, in most colleges, beer is available to people under the age of twenty-one. “Remorseless drinking has long been as much a ritual of university life as football, final exams, and frat parties” (Gorman, 176). I believe that the federal government is tempting these underage adults by restricting their legal ability to drink in such an environment as college campuses where it is legal for many of the students to consume alcoholic beverages. In order to be able to drink alcohol, many underage adults purchase fake forms of identification; “Raising the legal drinking age from 18 to 21 in the 1980s merely triggered a boom in the business of creating fake ID cards” (Gorman, 176). People twenty-years of age and younger are purchasing these fake forms of identification in order to allow them to enter and drink in bars with their friends who are of age, and to allow them purchase beer in stores. Many may say that no matter what age the government sets as the standard legal drinking age, people who are underage are going to have friends who are of age. This situation will always be a problem, but if the legal drinking age would be lowered back down to eighteen, there would be fewer instances where this situation would occur, because the majority of eighteen-year-olds attend college with people who are older and of age. Also, if the legal drinking age were lowered down to eighteen, there would be less of a need...
