In Barrett Seaman’s “How Binging Became the New College Sport”, Mr. Seaman discusses the new college trend of “pregaming” and the dangers of over consuming alcohol. To “pregame”, is to drink hard alcohol before going out to a party or big social event and has lead to death of 300 college students in the US. Some students may even consume up to 22 shots of hard liquor when pregaming, which can land them in hospital for alcohol poisoning. Mr. Seaman proposes that the drinking age should be lowered to 18. Lowering the drinking age would decrease alcohol abuse in college students. As the famous quote says, what’s the fun in doing what you’re told? “There is no doubt that the law, which achieved full fifty-state compliance in 1988, saved lives, but it had the unintended consequence of creating a covert culture around alcohol as the young adult’s forbidden fruit” (180). People that cannot drink legally sometimes drink just for the thrill or as rebellion of authority. Lowering the drinking age would erase drinking alcohol as a “forbidden fruit”. Without drinking alcohol being seen as a forbidden fruit, the hype of pregaming and consuming large amounts of alcohol at one time would decrease. The thrill of breaking the law would be gone.
` Another famous saying goes around the means of “with time comes great responsibility”. “Meanwhile, we should let pregamers come out of their dorm rooms so that they can learn to handle alcohol like the adults we hope and expect them to be” (181). Most college students are at least eighteen years old and considered adults in every legal sense, except for being able to purchase and consume alcohol. Parents, teachers, and other adult influences, set children on a path to adulthood. Within the path of maturing and growing up, parents and teachers should educate their children on responsible drinking as it is a part of the adults they would