Culture, laws fuel underage drinking epidemic

As college students, I think we can all agree that legal drinking age 21 has been a failure. We know that it has been a failure because our collective college culture is a tragic byproduct of this failure. College students nationwide have earned a reputation for harboring a culture revolving around outrageously excessive drinking tendencies. Although it seems we've all grown to love and adore our unique culture, I think it's important to recognize that we drink the way we do because of legal drinking age 21. As adolescents, alcohol was that forbidden drink that mom and dad drank with their friends. As we grew older, we became curious. Curiosity turned into sneaking liquor from the liquor cabinet with curious friends. It wasn't long before we found out that our other friends were also curious. If we were lucky, a friend's parents recognized the need to provide a safe, supervised environment in which we could explore this curiosity. Most of us had to escape into a cornfield, find out whose parents left for the weekend, or find some older friends with whom we could drink. Thus, most of us began drinking with no supervision and no instruction. For most of us it was the first drug we'd used. It made us feel different. We could talk to the opposite sex more comfortably, we did things we were otherwise too apprehensive to do, and we acted in a ridiculous, yet hilarious manner. At first, drinking brought good things and one can never have too much of a good thing. We drank more frequently. Our tolerance rapidly climbed. Soon we were drinking more and more to experience the same feeling and to keep up with our friends. Pushing the limits meant facing the negative side of alcohol. Classmates were killed in automobile accidents and, for some, our grades, health, motivation, and development suffered. By the time we finished high school our culture had developed around this ritualistic act of imbibing excessive amounts of alcohol in remote locations. It was our way of lashing out at the authority figures who simply told us "no." Colleges nationwide have become ideal nesting grounds for young people who've developed in this manner because college means thousands of students coming together with all of the necessary freedom and resources to make such a culture thrive. Such a clashing of forces often brings detoxification, legal trouble, and, on occasion, death. Then the colleges and the police forces struggle as they wonder why they can't stop a destructive culture that's too strong and too deep to be stopped. We must cultivate a new culture for our coming generations, a culture where young people are taught safety, moderation, and responsibility rather than being left to experiment under the uninformative wing of prohibition. The cultivation of this culture begins with legally allowing young people to develop safe, moderate, and responsible habits well before they clash with one another at college and this means no more legal age 21.