Absolutely. Certainly alcohol can be abused by teens; but, guess what? It can and is also abused by over 21's. Most countries have much lower age limits for drinking and it works fine. Kids learn to drink responsibly with their families instead of waiting until they leave home and go nuts with their equally inexperienced friends.

In Europe, where the drinking age is generally 16 or lower, the rate of traffic deaths is about half per person what it is here in the USA.

The excuse about drunk driving is patently just neo-prohibitionist nonsense. If MADD really objected to teen traffic deaths they would be fighting to raise the driving age instead of their countless attacks on drinking. Raising the driving age to 21 and reducing the drinking age to 16 would virtually eliminate teen traffic deaths. But you won't hear MADD saying that, they are just trying to make alcohol impractical or unavailable for everyone. Their pushes for lower and lower BAC's is making having a couple of drinks with dinner at a restaurant illegal. That's their real goal.

Yes and No. No, because our society has been trained by law to see alcohol as a forbidden fruit, as this thing that only certain people are allowed to have, which only makes it more desirable, which then decreases people’s sense of responsibility with the substance. In addition, many parents have contributed to the concept of alcohol as “forbidden,” rather than teaching their children how to be responsible with it, adding even more to this desire to obtain alcohol in excess.

Take this personal experience: I was raised drinking alcohol, though sparingly, since I was a tween (in my home, of course) and alcohol was willingly given to me in moderation by my parents. They were dedicated to educating me and they made alcohol a regularity that really wasn’t any big deal at all. The result: I don’t have any desire to drink in excess and still have trouble understanding what is so appealing about it. Now, I have a friend who grew up with the household philosophy of alcohol is bad, and not allowed until your 21, and you will be in so much trouble if you drink before then… This friend and I were at a party in high school and someone gave her an awful tasting drink—we’re talking so bad a dog wouldn’t drink it—made up mostly of alcohol, but she drank it anyway. I asked her why she would drink something that tasted so bad, rather than get a nice tasting drink that she would enjoy (instead of making a raisin face all night) with a bit less alcohol. You know what she said? “Because I want to get drunk, duh!”

Now wait a minute, you can still get drunk… just enjoyably. But my friend was so hung up on how forbidden alcohol was and how awesome it was that she got her hands on it that she just wanted as much as fast as she could get it. There was no responsibility, and she paid for it. It’s because of common examples like this that 18 year olds should not be able to buy beer—because they just didn’t grow up with it and learn to be responsible with it.

Now, the reason I say yes is because alcohol in moderation is a great pleasure in life and if you’re responsible with it, you should be able to enjoy it. This isn’t to say I think 18 year olds should drink alcohol. In some ways I don’t. Too much of it over time, even if you are responsible, can be damaging to a growing body. But I do think the choice should be there, just based on the philosophy of “born rights” and what we as Americans consider adults. Plus, the Europeans have seemed to be able to make it work. However, I think it will be very unlikely that the choice will ever become available at a younger age because our society so frequently puts alcohol on a pedestal. If the law changed, there would be significantly higher drunken crime until the irresponsible generations cycled out of society. Maybe, once the last generation giving alcohol this alluring power was gone or no longer influential, our society’s alcohol related actions would settle back to normal or even improve. However, the initial change would likely be too discouraging and we would not have the patience to wait for things to turn around.

So though some may want the choice to be there, I highly doubt that it ever will.

(I think this got a bit jumbled, but hopefully it makes sense.)

I don't think that I agree with that statement, a lot of times boys and girls choose the life in the military as there is no more draft, they get to choose to die for those they love and they get to choose to make a life for themselves in the military. However, choices is the point. Many youth are not mature, they are not going into the military either. Once you make it legal, you not only give those boys and girls who are mature the right to drink but you give the immature girls and boys the right to drink. That is where choices come in. The boy or girl who chooses to go into the military knows that they may go to war or be called upon to give their lives, however the kid who kills someone while drunk driving, gives that person who dies no choice but to die for the kids drinking.

I understand that you can die for your country, but you get to choose to do that. What choice does the person who dies because a teenager chose to have a drink and get behind the wheel of a car. Therefore while maturity is exhibited by those who want to fight for their country, once drinking becomes the law, they will not be the only one buying alcohol.

I agree with the concept, but I think the reasoning is specious.

We regularly turn over deadly tools to 16 year olds; they're called automobiles. You're talking about thousands of pounds of steel moving very fast, more than enough to kill all of the occupants and anybody they can hit. Denying alcohol to them is just a way of trying to ensure that they use that tool responsibly.

Those "dying for their country" are also handed deadly weapons, and if you don't think that an 18 year old can make mature decisions about alcohol and the deadly weapons they're permitted access to, why should the deadly rifle be any different?

Alcohol is not a reward for service; it's an intoxicant that society has decided should be restricted to people who are mature enough to handle it. And there's good reason to believe that they aren't mature enough to handle it: when the drinking age was raised to 21, alcohol-related fatalities dropped by half:

http://www.nih.gov/about/researchresultsforthepublic/AlcoholRelatedTrafficDeaths.pdf

That's a lot; it's estimated to have saved over 100,000 lives.

Age-related laws are always going to be arbitrary: many teenagers could handle alcohol safely, just as many (but not all) can safely handle weapons in the service of their country. The divisions end up being arbitrary.

I would support allowing soldiers to drink when they are on base, especially if they're forbidden from driving. People seem to recognize the deadly power of weapons, and avoid using them even when drunk (usually). But they don't recognize the deadly power of a car, since murder is not its intended purpose, but cars kill more people every year than firearms do. If soldiers can be semi-supervised with alcohol, as they are with the weapons, under controlled circumstances, they may be able to use it safely.

But in general, the dichotomy between service and alcohol does not bother me. It seems odd at first, but when you look deeper there are good reasons. Maybe the rules should alter, but the current rules are not without foundation.