When you come upon a law that you think is stupid or outdated in the US, of which there are many, the question becomes: do you follow it, or do you break it? There’s a lot of laws here that just don’t make any sense. A part of that is that it’s a democracy and that there’s just too many lawyers in this country. One of the major laws I’m thinking about that has affected me is the drinking age limit law. In the US, you can vote when you’re 18, you can get married, but you can’t drink alcoholic beverages. This has always seemed a bit ridiculous to me because it means, for some people, they can’t legally have a ceremonial toast at their wedding.
Of course, the intention is to prevent drunk driving deaths, I understand, but is it really doing its job? Do you really think college students are not drinking in colleges? If anything, don’t you think you should legalize drinking at the college level and then educate young people how to drink (i.e. make healthy drinking a part of the culture in, say, within the social clubs)? The drinking age limit of 21 in the US is a bit old. If it were up to me, it’s really the South Korean limit of 19 that makes the most sense: a year of lawful sobriety in college followed by the healthy integration of alcohol into the culture. Alcohol in college feels like a very natural part of the experience. Do we really need to make it a clandestine thing where it can potentially be abused?
The Ivory Tower 
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