The US should lower the legal drinking age to 18

== My case == My opponent and I seem to agree that there needs to be *some* drinking age, we just disagree about where to draw the line. I argue that the line should be drawn at 18 because that"s when kids go to college, and a drinking age of 18 grants colleges more discretion to ensure that students are drinking in supervised and safe environments. In contrast, my opponent chooses the completely arbitrary age of 21. My opponent talks about drugs, but that"s irrelevant to the debate. This isn"t a debate about drug legalization. There"s no "responsible" way to use heroin and no "irresponsible" way to use marijuana, so the analogy doesn"t even apply. Learning moderation is unique to the alcohol context. My opponent loses by essentially conceding my Seaman evidence, which proves that college students *can* learn responsible drinking behavior in the right environment if the drinking age is lowered. McGill is in Canada, where the drinking age is 18; my opponent seems confused and thinks it"s in the US. Furthermore, he says people can drink with parents at 18, but that"s not a true legal drinking age of 21. He"s basically conceding that people *do* need to learn responsible drinking behavior from older people, but disagrees that peers, RA"s, and professors are a good group to learn from. The fact is that college students don"t respect their parents" views on alcohol: they think their parents are lame. They are only going to learn responsible behavior from peers and people they respect, in a "normal" drinking environment (not in their homes, under parental supervision). My opponent also concedes my Stanford example, but then says that parents can teach children. However, the Stanford structure wouldn"t work under that framework. Parents do not live with their children in their dormitories, which is where they are going to consume alcohol. Only a structure that legalizes Stanford"s only semi-legal regime would help to impart more responsible drinking behavior upon college students. I don"t advocate merely lowering the drinking age, but also putting in place systems like those at Stanford and McGill that impart responsible drinking behavior. One hundred thirty college presidents agree with me because they want to adopt similar systems. Lastly, my opponent cold concedes the rape argument. He merely says that rape is caused by other factors, but I provided a *link* between a higher drinking age and rape: women have to pre-drink (which causes them to black out) and can only "party" at fraternities, which are high-risk for rape. My opponent provides no other plausible explanation for why rapes on college campuses in Canada are nearly two-thirds lower. Americans and Canadians are not so different that it can be explained by culture. Reducing rapes by two-thirds is the biggest impact in this debate and is why you should vote Pro. == Rebuttal == R1) Health My opponent concedes that three-fourths of underage students drink now. He also concedes that almost one-fifth of all alcohol drinks consumed in the US is by underage people. The question is *not* whether they will drink, but *how* they will drink. Right now, 90% of them binge drink. My intervention can only hope to ameliorate this. My opponent also concedes that only *heavy* drinking causes negative health effects. Light to moderate alcohol consumption actually has positive health effects, such as better memory in later life. [1] So the question is not whether young people will drink, but whether they will do it in a way that hurts their health, or doesn"t. Only interventions that teach more responsible drinking can solve this problem, so this point goes to Pro. R2) Violence in bars By conceding my meta-study that lowering the drinking age does not increase violence or criminality among youth, my opponent loses this point. I also turn this point with my study showing that pre-gaming culture leads to more violence, so any intervention that reduces pre-gaming culture reduces violence. R3) Responsibility The US no longer *needs* 18-year-old soldiers. This isn"t WWII anymore. But at age 18, we still allow people to die for their country, get married, and take on crushing debt that could take a lifetime to pay off. [2] If we trust 18-year-olds enough as adults to do *these* things, then we should also trust them to drink alcohol. We shouldn"t infantilize them and pretend they are adults in some respects, but not in others. The age of 21 is arbitrary. There is no policy reason to choose this age over any other. On fairness grounds, you should vote Pro on this point alone. If you are old enough to die for your country, you are old enough to drink a beer. Arguments in favor of reducing teenage pregnancy would not justify raising the age of consent to 21. The current drinking age implicates basic principles of autonomy. R4) Traffic fatalities My opponent drops my studies proving that drunk driving fatalities were *already* falling prior to the adoption of the drinking age and that *other countries* saw similar drops, despite not changing their drinking age laws. So he can"t hope to win this point. His evidence from Japan and Morocco is inconclusive. The Morocco statistic was for *all* vehicle fatalities, not just drunk driving fatalities. The Japan statistic was that only 10% of traffic fatalities in Japan were due to drunk driving. But that could simply mean that for some reason, Japan has a lot more *non*-alcohol-related road fatalities (compared to other countries). The number of drunk driving fatalities per thousand residents is a better statistic for cross-country comparison, but Pro doesn"t provide this number. As further proof, 32% of all traffic fatalities in the US are caused by drunk driving. [2] Thus, even though our drinking age is one year *higher* than in Japan, we have a much larger percentage of drunk driving fatalities (compared to total vehicle fatalities) than Japan does. Either the *percentage* of fatalities due to drunk driving is a meaningless number, or the US-Japan comparison proves that a *lower* drinking age in Japan caused fewer alcohol-related fatalities. Furthermore, my opponent never answers my objection that there is no evidence that there are more drunk driving fatalities (per thousand residents) in Canada and Europe, which have much lower drinking ages. R5) Healthier This argument is no different than "medically dangerous." Look to R1 for my response. R6) Trickle down There is reason to believe that alcohol won"t trickle down to lower-age high school students: they lack the "connections" to older students to convince them to buy them alcohol. Con dismisses my argument as merely anecdotal, but it"s not only based on my personal experience, but observing everyone at my high school: freshmen were not friends with seniors. Con doesn"t even attempt to claim that his own high school experience is any different, so mine is the only proof offered in this debate. Furthermore, he *drops* my argument that high school students (unlike college students) have nowhere to drink. There"s a reason that most high school drinking takes place at prom: it"s the only night where kids are away from their parents. And while fake ID"s are illegal, so is furnishing alcohol to a minor. If my opponent is suggesting that illegality is an effective deterrent, then 18-year-olds will be deterred from furnishing alcohol to minors (which is a rather serious offense, more serious currently than giving alcohol to someone *over* 18). R7) Drugs Con claims that his study didn"t include marijuana, but it did. The comparison to Japan is rather ridiculous. Marijuana is just not a popular drug there, considering only 1.2% have tried it *ever* in their lives. In the US, 32.8% of high school seniors have tried marijuana. [3] These cross-country comparisons simply don"t work. Con concedes my "respect for the law" argument, which is a turn: people try drugs at young ages because alcohol is illegal, and they try that and wonder what other illegal things might not be as bad as society claims. Lowering the drinking age would therefore decrease drug use. He also drops that his correlation is merely due to a risk-taking personality, that marijuana constitutes most of the drug use in the study and marijuana is less bad than alcohol, and that there is no evidence that drug use is more rampant among youth in Canada or Europe where the drinking age is lower. Thus, none of Con"s points survive scrutiny, whereas I prove that lowering the drinking age will promote more responsible drinking behavior and *significantly* reduce rape. This outweighs any of Pro"s speculative impacts, which do not bear up when looking to Canada or Europe. Vote Pro. [1] http://tinyurl.com... [2] http://tinyurl.com... [3] http://tinyurl.com...