So youre finally eighteen. Youre a legal adult! Suddenly you can smoke, vote, join the army, fornicate, or even die for your country, but yet you are still not old enough to buy or consume alcoholic beverages. No, you will have to wait three more years for that, until your twenty-one. Well I for one believe that the legal drinking age should be lowered from twenty-one to eighteen. If we are considered an adult and expected to act like one at age 18 it isnt right to restrict us to a drinking age of 21. At eighteen you can drive cars, fly planes, marry, vote, pay taxes, take out loans and risk our lives as members of the U.S. armed forces. But laws in all 50 states say that no alcoholic beverages may be sold to anyone until that magic "21" birthday. Who says that twenty-one is the magical age that makes one intelligent and mature enough to consume alcohol? Surely some adults abuse alcohol and some teenagers would be perfectly able to drink responsibly. While 21 may be the legal drinking age in the U.S., no scientific evidence exists proving this is the age at which young people can safely begin drinking alcohol. At 18, they're considered adults. Yet when they want to enjoy a drink like other adults, they are, as they put it, "disenfranchised." By lowering the drinking age it would take away some of the temptation. Its not as much fun when its allowed! The most common reason for underage drinking is because alcohol is seen as the forbidden fruit or a badge of rebellion against Authority and as a symbol of adulthood. So is 21 really the magical age of I am mature enough to drink? Our state seems to think so! Join me in helping give all eight-teen year olds the right to all adult privileges not just the ones the benefit the government. Teen drinking has been a long-standing problem in American culture, which the drinking age laws have done very little to stop. The American society does not teach the youth limits or responsibilities. Instead, they seemingly assume that, upon reaching the legal age of twenty-one, those children will somehow know their limits and be able to control themselves with alcohol and other such substances. With the focus on education about safe drinking instead of restriction, many problems would have averted. Do you know that 80.4\% of students in grade 9 through 12 will have had at least one drink of alcohol in their lifetime? Of this same age group, 51.6\% of students will have had at least one drink of alcohol during the least thirty days. Who is there to stop them? How are you going to stop your kid from drinking? Just try to imagine for a second, future teenagers who are well educated and knowledgeable, and know what drinking can do to them. I guarantee that abuse of alcohol would be lowered if we would teach them how to drink safely and gradually. Or maybe we can just let it go, and ignore the problem like we are doing now. We tried to stop abuse of alcohol by raising the drinking age limit, and look what happened. More and more kids everyday kill themselves and people around them in the car accidents. Lets now try something different, something that might finally work. First, I would like to ask you to start realizing that we have a big problem with drinking under age, and that the only way how we can solve that is by stop ignoring it. Also we should start educate our friends, familiesour kids, about alcohol abuse, and teach them how to drink safe, instead punishing them. Secondly, I would ask you to take those telephone # & E-mail addresses and contact our local & state authorities and tell them how you fell about drinking age limit and how you fell about work that is done so far. The drinking age should be lowered because the current age has no real basis, With a lowered drinking age, fewer problems will be present. We need to teach safe drinking-in moderation. I feel that the problems, which make a drinking age limit necessary, are better solved through a lowered drinking age. Thank you!