the drinking age should not be lowered to 18

Since the Pro side feels the need only to re-state the maturity issue I will simply quote myself. "Not being mature enough had no bearing on whether I had to finish my 6 years. I signed up, and I was expected to serve the time regardless." Not being mature enough, as I stated, was personal to me, and I did not in any way imply that all 18 year olds are immature, but clearly the pro side requires a "spelling out" so-to-say. I brought up the issue of maturity to impress upon the opposition that maturity doesn"t have a single thing to do with the number 18. Both the statistics I quoted prove this regarding alcohol, as they show a 45 year old is no more capable, if only LESS capable, of consuming alcohol responsibly than an 18 year old or younger. Maturity doesn"t matter in the case of a criminal court, only the number of years you have been alive. A job position does not treat an 18 year old with a softer hand upon failure than they do a 30 year old in the same position. The CONSEQUENCES are the same regardless of your age once you are 18 or older. A fifth of whiskey will get you just as drunk at 18 as it will at 30. An Iraqi bullet does the same damage to an 18 year old heart as a 50 year old one. So unless pro wants to raise the age for everything, her anti-military argument is neither related nor valid. Now, before the pro side seeks to distort what I have said, I am not by any means implying maturity doesn"t make a difference as to whether a person is qualified to consume alcohol. Certainly we would hope that anyone who consumes alcohol does so responsibly. But the numbers do not show that more mature use of alcohol occurs at more age. A middle age person is more likely to be an alcoholic, and a 25 year old is more likely to drive drunk. So it"s not that maturity doesn"t matter, it"s that maturity isn"t a factor. If we cannot expect more mature behavior from someone between the ages of 25-45 than we can from an adolescent, which the data clearly shows, then perhaps it is them to whom we should deny alcohol! That actually is the metaphor for the true problem, and that is our completely backwards way of introducing things to our children. You would never wait to teach your child to drive until after you sent them to the grocery store in the Porsche, you take them to an empty parking lot where they are likely to do the least amount of damage possible if they screw up BEFORE you take them out on the real roads with their large steel lethal weapon. You wouldn"t show them a video of driving and then hand them the keys. Why on earth aren"t we doing this with alcohol? Instead of having a glass of wine or two at home with mom and dad, in a safe environment (parking. lot.) where they are the least likely to do themselves or others harm, we drop them into the bar scene or at a friend"s house with a full bottle of Jack Daniel"s and the expectation of getting completely smashed as quickly as possible to commemorate the occasion. And we do this after showing them a video about how alcohol works biologically and showing them how many shots equal glasses of wine, but with no real experience to back up that knowledge. I was going to ask "how is that logical?" but I think in this instance it"s better to just say it"s not, in any conceivable way. That"s tantamount to handing a new 16 year old the keys to the car after playing Mario Kart for twenty minutes and shouting "good luck" as they get on the highway. Since pro is so concerned with maturity levels, but has yet to impart what number she thinks is suitable for "general maturity", I ask this; If 18 year olds are not mature, but 25 year olds are equally or less irresponsible with alcohol (still not mature), then why not seek to give them both the experience they need to have to make responsible mature decisions about alcohol before it causes irreparable damage? And while the vast majority of 18 year olds still live at home for at least a portion of this year of age, why not lower the age even further, to 16, when an adolescent is even more restricted by parental influence and rules and will have an additional two years to make mistakes and learn from them before they are set loose on the population? I would further like to demonstrate how statistical data works, for the pro side"s reading pleasure. "The only reason 21+ have more problems, is because that's when driking is legal. they drink much more, so they have more problems." That"s not how statistics work. They number demonstrates what percent of a population does what. The percent doesn"t change whether the population is 10,000,000 or 10. The quote stated that "5.8 percent of 16 or 17 year olds and 15.1 percent of 18 to 20 year olds reported driving under the influence of alcohol in the past year" That means all the members of both groups were drivers who drank alcohol at all, and a larger percent of the second group used that alcohol and got behind the wheel. The way you"re interpreting this is that the second group had more access and therefore more likelihood of DUI, and therefore they were more likely to drive with it, but neither group was of age. And in fact the older group was more likely to drive drunk. They are comparing apples to slightly older apples, not apples to oranges. Feel free to follow the link, where the study in its entirety is viewable, so the actual conductors of the study can impart this if you"re confused. The second study, same reason. "Only around three per cent of young people drank alcohol on more than five days in a week compared with 16 per cent of people aged 45 to 64" That means ANYONE who was younger than this age group consumed less alcohol. A 25 year old, a 30 year old, or a 40 year old all consumed less alcohol than anyone in the 45-64 range. Here"s the link directly to this study (http://www.ons.gov.uk...) where it breaks it down by age. If you are going to question the validity of data, you have to go to the source and point out why the study was flawed, not use roundabout reasoning and odd logic that completely ignores the method by which the data was collected and interpreted. Finally, "18 is old enough. it isn't. it is well established that drunk driving and reckless behavior occurs then, and that it is less and less in proportion to increased age.". Pro has twice repeated this claim and twice has failed to use any evidence to back it up. If you are not going to provide a source which upholds this very general claim(or rather, claims), or define reckless behavior and it's relation to alcohol use, both the con side as well as an outside observer are going to have to take it for opinion, and not fact.