You get done with a long hard day on the battlefield, and you want to relax with an ice cold beer. I’m sorry soldier, you’re 18; you can’t celebrate being alive with alcohol until your 21.
You vote for the president of the United States, and you feel like a responsible adult. Wrong. You aren’t responsible enough to drink until you’re 21.
Now, an 18-year-old can handle the responsibility to buy a pornographic movie, go to certain strip clubs and smoke cigarettes, but he will supposedly fail supremely if he purchases beer to drink. To me, it seems just plain ridiculous. What is the law trying to prove here? That cigarettes and porn are for semi-responsible people, and alcohol is that final step to maturity?
Can a 21-year-old really have that much more maturity than an 18-year-old? In my experience with people of these age differences, I think not. Telling someone specifically what not to do makes even the most responsible human being want to do it even more. Also, if someone can get alcohol all the time, they are more than likely to drink in moderation, unlike someone who can’t get it all the time, who would probably binge whenever he can drink.
Let me throw some numbers in the mixture. Among drinkers in college, www.indiana.edu/engs/articles/fruit.html says 32 percent of all students under 21 are heavy drinkers compared to the 24 percent of legal age who claim they are. I think that says something.
Enough with statistics and facts; I’m going to tell you how other freshmen in college and I feel about this situation. It’s flat out ridiculous. An 18-year-old person can buy rolling papers, and for the ones reading this that think they are for tobacco, it’s more than likely not the case. Yet the clueless lawmakers just turn their heads.
Why don’t they bump up the purchasing age on tobacco products? Don’t cigarettes and alcohol both kill you in the long run? Perhaps cigarettes don’t impair your driving, but lighting a cigarette, cigar or a joint on the road could be distracting and cause a wreck.
There’s a tear in my beer for all the lawmakers who tried to make this law work because they’re failing every day. I could be looking too deep into this, but the law acts as if only alcohol can cause a wreck, but it should apply the same standard to tobacco products. Don’t understand? Well, for all you smokers of different things, how easily can you light something without looking down, even for a split second? That’s enough time for a deer or child to run out in front of you.
There are so many arguments on this subject, most of them being between adults who don’t want their children on the roads with teens that might be drunk, and teens that just want to drink, not drive, without getting arrested.
Maybe one day everyone can crack open an ice cold Bud Light. It’s about time we all deserved one.