Radley Balko has a great piece up at Reason arguing that it’s time we considered lowering the drinking age back to 18.

Balko cites three reasons that the age should be lowered, or at least in favor of the proposition that the Federal Government should not be the one setting the drinking age, and they all make an incredible amount of sense:

The first is that the age set by the legislation is basically arbitrary. The U.S. has the highest drinking age in the world (a title it shares with Indonesia, Mongolia, Palau). The vast majority of the rest of the world sets the minimum age at 17 or 16 or has no minimum age at all. (…) The second drawback of the federal drinking age is that it set the stage for tying federal mandates to highway funds, enabling Congress to meddle in all sorts of state and local affairs it has no business attempting to regulate â€” so long as it can make a tortured argument about highway safety. (…) The final drawback is pretty straightforward: It makes little sense that America considers an 18-year-old mature enough to marry, to sign a contract, to vote and to fight and die for his country, but not mature enough to decide whether or not to have a beer.

That final one has never made sense to me. At 18, I was old enough to do anything I wanted…..except drink a beer or a glass of wine. I seldom find arguments about “fairness” persuasive, but in this case I think there’s some merit to it. There is no logical reason that an 18 year old should not be able to choose whether or not to legally drink alcohol.

Of course, as Balko points out, adults between 18 and 21 are still drinking, they’re just doing it secretly:

Kenyon College President S. Georgia Nugent has expressed frustration with the law, particularly in 2005 after the alcohol-related death of a Kenyon student. And former Time magazine editor and higher ed reporter Barrett Seaman echoed McCardell’s concerns in 2005. The period since the 21 minimum drinking age took effect has been “marked by a shift from beer to hard liquor,” Seaman wrote in Time, “consumed not in large social settings, since that was now illegal, but furtively and dangerously in students’ residences. In my reporting at colleges around the country, I did not meet any presidents or deans who felt the 21-year age minimum helps their efforts to curb the abuse of alcohol on their campuses.”

That last part is, I think, an important point. A 20 year old who wants to drink will still find a way to do it, but much like the drug user who finds themselves going after more powerful highs on the black market, they will choose something harder, like gin or vodka, and they’ll drink more of it.

It’s time to lower the drinking age and treat adults like adults.