The Drinking Age Conundrum

We have all read articles, talked in classes and debated friends and family on whether the current drinking age should be lowered or if it should remain the same. But let us sit back and imagine our nation with a drinking age at 18.
Moderation. This is something one should learn from parents and peers. Moderation is something that should be taught and not told. There is that time in all our lives when we begin to drink for the first time and we take it too far. If one is an underage high school student, who is there to call? The fear of getting into trouble with authorities has an on-going presence in our social lives. When student A becomes so inebriated that they can not talk, walk or open their eyes, and students B and C leave them without calling for help in fear of punishment, this presents a problem.
Many lives have been taken from abuse of alcohol, and could have been saved with one phone call to 911. The fear is that once one calls and the authorities come into a dorm, apartment, house, etc. that they will write you up and get you into trouble.
All across college campuses students indulge behind closed doors, experimenting and finding quick ways to get drunk. The problem of drinking extends way past the issue of drinking and driving. Students drink clandestinely and when one poor student drinks too much, it is not even a possibility to call help, instead they will wait it out.
The common arguments of lowering the drinking age is the hypocrisy of enlisting and voting but not being able to enjoy an alcoholic beverage, or perhaps we should be more like Europe and teach moderation young. Perhaps we should seek to invent some sort of alcohol license and only those who have taken a course and passed a test on awareness of alcohol and alcohol poisoning should be allowed to purchase and consume alcohol. Maybe if it weren’t illegal, college and high school students would not indulge as often, or take extreme measures to produce a buzz.
It is hard to imagine a lowered drinking age and predict what would happen. It would be almost like an experiment. There are those believe that having it lowered would reduce alcohol-related fatalities, and those who believe it would just spark another age group into a drinking pattern.
Drinking problems on school campuses are not hyperbolic, they are very real. But instead of police trying to bust students for drinking a beer or two, should they be out looking for a driver who has had one too many? Maybe a more open policy of dialing up an emergency is more important than writing up a student.
Although a change in legal age may not be in our near future, it is something interesting to ponder and that remains ambiguous and cumbersome. Safety remains the most important issue, and as long as no one is drinking and driving, or leaving someone in a drunken stupor to potentially meet a fatal situation, I don’t see the difference of being over-eighteen or over-twenty one.