Please Do Not Lower the Legal Age for Drinking!

There has been so much discussion recently on lowering the drinking age to 18. Apparently, one of the key arguments is that if someone is old enough to die for his/her country in war then they should be old enough to drink. I don't buy it. This article will give just a few of the reasons that I totally don't buy this argument.

First, a short story I read in the paper this week. A group in England was petitioning that bars be kept open later to reduce the incidence of binge drinking. Yes, you read that correctly. Let them drink longer to reduce binge drinking. The justification was this - people increase the amount of alcohol consumption before "last call", so they will have a later "last call". Seems to me that a late last call is still a last call, and I just cannot imagine how letting people drink longer will reduce their level of drinking. This is similar to the reasoning I read about for proposing to lower the drinking age to 18.

First, as a college teacher, I can tell you that there is a HUGE difference in maturity between an 18 year old and a 21 year-old. HUGE. As a person reaches 21, they start to be more in control of their own actions and less likely to be swayed by the whim of their friends. Although there are always exceptions, the odds are better that a 21 year-old will take more time to reflect on the dangers of drinking and driving before getting behind the wheel when they are intoxicated. Maybe they have experienced a friend getting hurt or an acquaintance getting killed. Maybe they are just more likely to reflect on their own actions and be less swayed by sudden hormonal changes. I don't know all the reasons that the differences in those two ages are so pronounced, but I can assure you that they are.

Second, there is a strong belief in the "recovery" community about addiction and emotional development. Apparently, when a person becomes addicted to drugs or alcohol, his emotional development STOPS at the age that the addiction started. Someone that started drinking at 14 tends to have an emotional age of 14 until they enter a rigorous program of recovery. Why does this happen? I'll use alcohol abuse as an example. When someone starts drinking, they might start for fun or amusement. But if the alcohol use continues and crosses the line of addiction, then he soon starts using alcohol as a "solution" to stress. A problem comes up, and he no longer learns how to deal with that problem. Instead, he quickly downs a drink - providing an immediate "release" of anxiety. Of course the problem doesn't get solved that way, but there is an "impression" that the alcohol made the problem "less problematic." So the next time a problem comes up, alcohol is the solution - and smart problem solving behavior never develops.

Emotional maturity is a process of learning to solve increasingly complex problems using our own personal resources. In the process of dealing with problems, we flex our emotional muscles and expand our ability to handle similar problems. We mature. If all problems are met with alcohol, then there is no emotional growth. There is one solution for everything and that solution is a quick drink. If this happens once or twice, there is no huge issue. But if an addiction develops and this happens repeatedly, then a person's emotional growth is stunted. That is why a person that starts drinking heavily at age 18 can remain an 18 year old emotionally indefinitely.

If we reduce the drinking age to 18, then we will freeze the emotional development of a large number of people who tend to abuse alcohol. Now you are thinking that a huge number of people aged 18 are already drinking and that is true. But at least there is some deterrent to that happening with a legal age limit of 21. But if 18 year-olds are drinking when the legal drinking age is 21, what age group will start drinking if the age is pushed down to 18. I have no proof, but I would lay a bet that a much larger proportion of 15-17 year-olds would start drinking excessively. The group of under-aged drinkers would not decrease, it would just be younger.