Holy Grail of Adulthood

Introduction The United States, one of the most advanced nations around, is one of four countries that have kept their Minimum Drinking Age at 21. Due to the National Minimum Drinking Age (NMDA) being age 21, the United States has been removed from the category with the Advanced Western Nations and was lumped in with small countries like Pakistan, Qatar, Oman, etc. In order to find out why the United States is willing to be clumped with small, developing places like those above, many people have done research and conducted tests on various drinking related activities of both the past and the present. The research on the ongoing debate has found that while many people were for lowering the NMDA, there were just as many that were against lowering it.

Back Ground Info During the Year 2009, various instances of vehicular deaths or accidents involving alcohol were documented. The statistics showed that the age group of 21- 24 held the highest percentage of fatal vehicular accidents with BAC levels being .08 or higher. This shows that regardless of the NMDA, newly fledged drinkers are the cause of most accidents. Courtney Carlson, an editor of The Californian says, “All European and many South and Central American countries have a legal drinking age of 18 or younger” (Carlson). Canada has a drinking age of 19; Germany has a drinking age of 16 for beer. These countries along with many others have a have NMDA of 18 or 19. Researchers were curious as to how the heavy drinking in Canada was compared to the drinking in the U.S. Courtney Carlson, editor for The Californian has relayed to us a startling fact, “Canada had adopted a legal drinking age of 19, and studies have shown that Canadian students drank less heavily then their American counterparts.” (Carlson). This could mean that the NMDA actually has nothing to do with drinking, it is