Should the legal drinking age be lowered, raised, or just simply left alone? This topic has been debated for a multitude of years. The law should be changed, and lowered to 18. If the law was lowered to 18, it would not be used as a way for teens to rebel, it would be easier to control, and would eliminate the dangers of minors secretly drinking. Firstly, if the idea of drinking alcohol was not so taboo in our country, its novelistic qualities would be eradicated; therefore eliminating its popularity among the rebellious participants. It has been said many times that across the board in Europe, drinking alcohol is apart of their regular culture. As far as I know, binge drinking is not as much of a problem there as it is in the United States because their citizens have had so much preexposure to alcohol. Based off of my experience, the use of alcohol in the U.S. is not so much for relaxation as it is to abuse in order to get drunk. If alcohol was to be made available to people as young as 18 years old, by the time they turned twenty-one, its appeal would fade and would no longer be such a prevalent problem in the college dormitory scene. To many kids (12-20), the thought of drinking may be so alluring because they have been told to stay away from it their entire lives. Right around the teenage years is when defiant tendencies tend to make themselves present in a young person's life. Typically the thought of defying a parent, administrator, or law official seems attractive to a person of that age, and often times alcohol is where they turn to. If the legal drinking age was lowered to 18, it would be less of an oddity to Americans, and because of this would not be used as a weapon in defiance. .
Next, by lowering the drinking age to 18, more money could be made off of the entire industry. If alcohol was to appeal to people as young as 18, it broadens the industry's audience by three generations of people.
