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This was actually the subject I used in my application here, but I'm really curious as to what you all think.

In America, the legal drinking age is 21. That being said, it's no secret that most children do not respect (and I use that word lightly) this law, and experiment with alcohol earlier. I believe the average age that kids begin to experiment with drinking is 14.

Lately there has been a push to lower the drinking age down to at least 18, and there have been many valid reasons to back this up:
-No one on college campuses would be underage, and thus no one would have to worry about enforcing keg parties.
-It might help to lower the "forbidden fruit" effect
-If you're old enough to smoke (except for in Jersey), vote, have sex, and be legally considered an adult, why shouldn't you be able to drink?
Like I said, these are all valid reasons.

However, there has been another push in the opposite direction. Some people have been pushing to raise the drinking age. The biggest contributing reason is the damage that can be done to the adolescent brain due to alcohol.

No one can deny that excessive alcohol consumption can damage one's liver, but not as many are aware of the irreversable effects it can have on the brain. Teenagers are especially suseptable to these effects due to the fact that adolescence is one of the major development periods for the frontal lobe.

The two major areas affected by excessive drinking are the hippocampus and the prefontal area.
The Hippocampus controls the memory and learning functions. Damage to this area is (like damage to all areas of the brain) irreversable and severe. The effects can range from limited vocabulary to strong difficiencies in memory recall.
The Prefrontal area defines personality in one's adult life, and damaging this can have lasting effects in the way an adolescent interacts with others later in life.

So, just how much alcohol consumption is "excessive"? Well actually, my source didn't specify. However, it seems that binge drinking once a week, or even with any kind of regularity depending on your age and ability to hold your alcohol can have at least some adverse effects on the brain.

In all honesty, I find it hard to actually believe that raising the legal drinking age will do anything to stop this. If anything, it will probably make binge drinking even more common among teens.

The way I would propose to help this problem is alcohol education. Similar to how sex education can be helpful to those who wish to pay attention, alcohol education may actually save a life or two. However, since sex isn't inherently damaging as much as drinking is (well, is considered to be), I doubt that schools could ever be able to teach kids how to drink safely. Instead, I propose that parents talk more openly with their children about alcohol and be open to allowing their children to try alcohol within the home.

Of course no solution is perfect and there would still be kids who get involved in binge drinking, but I think (and maybe naively) that it could work.

So what do you think about the drinking age? Should it be raised, lowered, kept the same, or taken away all together?

Source for brain-damage information: http://www.ama-assn.org/ama/pub/category/9416.html

19, they just raised it.

It's a touchy question. There's much less binge drinking in countries in Europe where there is a lower drinking age or none at all (with the exception of France). However, alcoholism is much higher in those countries as well. So there are pro's and con's to the whole "Europe has the right idea" argument that I've heard about so much.

*sigh* I believe the Europeans have it right. If you are slowly introduced to alcohol, like with a glass of wine at meals, then when you get older, you are far less likely to do binge drinking, and you know your limits by then so you don't get wasted.

In Amercia, especially the South I hate to admit, it is a custom that when you turn 21 you take 21 shots to welcome you into adult-hood, I know of cases where the person has had to go to the hositpal right away, Happy Birthday indeed.

Do the Europeans really have it right? In my post I actually stated while it's true that there are less incidents of binge drinking (except in France), there is a much higher proportion of alcoholism, which in my mind, isn't much better than binge drinking. So its hard to say what the right answer is.

It's not that I was introduced to alcohol at a young age, it's my predominantly Irish heritage, combined with the fact that I have some sort of heightened tolerance for all things. Alcohol, nicotine, marijuana; it really doesn't matter what it is, I'm pretty much immune.

EDIT: I need to remember to finish my thoughts. And to stop clicking "quote" when I mean "edit".

Yeah, I suppose that my tolerance has its limits, but I remember a time when I was living in Illinois. My roommate and I had our girlfriends over, and a few others, and we were all in the basement drinking beer, vodka, tequila, and Everclear. Well, okay, I split the bottle with my girlfriend. 90-10, with me drinking the 90. I also had about five beers. She had one beer. She was damn near trashed, I was damn near fine. I wasn't safe to drive, but I likely could have walked to the store without it being obvious that I was intoxicated. Afterwards, typical teenage debauchery ensued, and everyone woke up with a hangover. Except me.

I think that when I finally do die, I'll leave my body to science. Just my luck, I'm the cure for cancer, or just a new variety thereof.

I do not drink, and I'm 22. I don't drink for a myriad of reasons, the main one being that "I just don't WANT to, so ******** off."

That said, I think that the legal drinking age should be lowered to 18, but that for years beforehand, parents should legally be able to teach their children to drink responsibly, maybe even instituting a "drinker permit" for learning alcohol-consumers.

By this, I mean that in almost EVERY OTHER VERY IMPORTANT THING IN OUR LIVES (excluding sex, but I think it should be included too) requires extensive education in our society. In order to drive a car, you're expected to take a training course and pass both a written and a "in action" test.

You can kill just as many people by not knowing how to drive and driving around as you can if you drive drunk, so why not teach kids responsible drinking?

There are no things in this world that we can learn how to do innately besides breathing, eating (and I'm not sure about that one considering some of the crap we eat), and taking a s**t.

When it comes to dancing, you aren't just born with smooth moves. When it comes to driving, you don't magically get your license when you turn 16 because it's an arbitrary age where you're supposed to have illegally been going around driving cars illegally and almost killing people or yourself in the process, and possibly even hurting someone for years beforehand.

That's the way it is with "arbitrary" numbers that allow you to do something, especially when society teaches us that the way you learn how to drink "properly" is through getting s**t faced at parties and having horrible experiences that you can look back on and go "wow, I'm surprised I survived that s**t; I was a total dumbass!".

So, in summary, drinking shouldn't be something you magically get shoved into because you "magically" become an adult.

It should be an act that you get taught about, much like you should be taught about proper food and nutrition, and about driving your car.

I'm not sure that it would be impossible that some day, people could become libral enough to teach sex ed classes. And then maybe alcohol ed classes, too. But maybe I'm naive.

The difference between sex ed and alcohol ed is that sex ed is sort of a "one size fits all" kind of education. There's only one right way to put on a condom, but there are many different right and wrong ways to drink depending on the individual. That's why I believe alcohol education should be done in the home. That, and I think that sex education will be much quicker to hit public schools (it's already implimented in many secular private schools) because sex isn't inherently destructive like alcohol is. Okay, well alcohol isn't inherently destructive, but I think that it is much more dangerous than sex in the way that it is more complicated to practice alcohol consumption safely. You have to know your personal limits and be able to understand when you've hit them once you're already intoxicated. Like I said before, there's only one right way to put on a condom. It just depends on your prescence of mind to use one at the heat of the moment. And there are certainly plenty of reasons that will scare you into remembering to put it on, whether you're taught abstinace in school or not.