The Booze Problem

In class with Mr. Kandell, we had a discussion about whether lowering the drinking age would actually prevent teens from abusing alcohol because they would learn to drink responsibly early. Katie mentioned that this would also support teens in a psychological way as well; when someone tells a teen to NOT do something, it makes them curious and more likely to do the very thing they were told not to do. If kids are allowed to do it, then they will learn EARLY if something bad happens to them, say a really bad hangover or they couldn't remember where they put their phone last night, rather than them finding out when they are 21 or sneaking around (as many high schoolers do now) pretending it's "so cool". They will remember what happens and learn what NOT to do for next time. I agree that lowering the drinking age to something like 17 or 18 would allow kids to experience it and find out the consequences themselves. Ideally, they would learn to be responsible and find their own limits and remember them for later verses suffering the unpleasant effects of "too much". Mr. Kandell brought up that lowering the age to something like 16 is stupid because people are just learning to drive at that time and we all know what happens when drinking and driving go hand in hand. I think that 18 is reasonable because teens are usually in senior year of high school or freshman year of college, a time where drinking can potentially dominate the social scene. Because this period in life is busy and highly important, learning how to balance alcohol in this pivotal stage would teach teens to be more responsible since they'd be forced to worry about other things as well.
I realize that my thinking is really only idealistc. The reality is that people can be pretty stupid. Giving them the responsiblity to know their own limits and to learn from their past experiences with alcohol can either start a revolution of awareness or backfire and lead to increased alcohol abuse. It's too much power to give. My thinking is this: if they like it, they'll keep doing it and as much as I would like to give people the benefit of the doubt, they'd probably binge or overdo it just cause they can. And because they love the "good times" they have when they're drunk. If they don't like it, some people (again, idealistically) might STOP because they now realize it can lead to potential chaos. However, a lot of people would also fall victim to peer pressure, and continue to do it if the other stupid people mentioned previously kept promoting its "coolness factor", even if they didn't care for it personally. An example of an already lower drinking age is Amsterdam. Amsterdam, or the "red light district" is just basically free in every way possible. There, people go crazy. There, people don't care about drinking responsibly. They don't make conscious efforts to know their limits when they're having fun. Some people go there just to do drugs and the like because... they can!
Right now, I think the drinking age is practically invalid since a lot of high schoolers party and drink. From what I've seen, most people actually LIKE it and keep doing it. And if they don't actually like it, well they at least pretend to like it because of their influential peers. If you think about it, most of the people who try drinking have a desire to have a "fun" time, thus they try alcohol because they believe it will make things fantabulous. They don't realize the consequences until they experience it personally. I don't know how much lowering the drinking age could solve the problem mainly because it has a higher risk of backfiring and leading to MORE abuse. There's too many "what ifs" to make this idea work.