Censorship, some may say, is necessary. The FCC needs it to ensure nothing offensive or uncouth resides in broadcast media such as television and radio. Nationmaster defines it as “the removal or withholding of information from the public by a controlling group or body.” In this manner it is necessary to help patrol the media airways, but there are many instances where censorship is completely unethical and should not be allowed. U.S. citizens often don’t even realize that they are being wrongfully controlled and actually accept it as “the law.” The most open form of censorship is right under our noses; by considering someone an adult yet not allowing them a fundamental freedom, society is accepting wrongful censorship in the form of the drinking age.
Put in the simplest rational terms, it isn’t fair to give a significant age group the title of “adult” with “adult responsibility” in every sense except to drink alcohol. This illogical withholding of alcohol until the age of 21 says openly that the U.S. government does not trust its own young adults nor take them seriously with a basic responsibility. The effects of alcohol should be taken seriously, but the government fails to provide successful education to young adults on this subject and goes about it the wrong way.
John McCardell is the former president of Middlebury College in Vermont and an activist leading the fight to get the drinking age lowered once more. ABC news reports the following: “McCardell now heads a nonprofit organization started in January [2008] called Choose Responsibility. The group is calling for lowering the national legal drinking age to 18 combined with education about the effects and risks of alcohol. ‘The current drinking age has just driven the drinking out of public view,’ McCardell told ABC News. ‘It has meant that instead of drinking in bars or restaurants where there is supervision, it's happening in dorms and dark corners.’ He argues that young people should be given alcohol education, much like driver's education, and then rewarded with a drinking license, for which they become eligible at 18.” McCardell also expressed these ideas when he debated the drinking age with MADD at UVM, explaining how further alcohol education is key in making a change, and hoping the government will change its destructive approach.
It is apparent that stronger education on the effects of alcohol in middle school throughout high school would be more likely to decrease alcohol abuse than would a drinking age of 21. “The U.S. has the highest drinking age in the world (a title it shares with Indonesia, Mongolia, Palau). The vast majority of the rest of the world sets the minimum age at 17 or 16 or has no minimum age at all” (Radley Balko). Many students have expressed a sincere interest in wanting to learn to take responsibility rather than be forcibly sheltered- expressing such views across many media including ample YouTube videos questioning why the U.S. drinking age is the highest in the world even though it’s one of the most developed countries.
Pure logic says that if you can marry, vote, smoke, buy pornography, drive cars and die for your country, you should be able to responsibly drink at leisure. Certainly the vast majority of the rest of the world can’t be wrong in this sense. Censorship, to a certain degree, will always be necessary to keep obscenity out of programming and the public- as long as this censorship is not abused or taken to an extreme, it may continue to be valued. But it isn’t right when young adults set to be legally responsible for their actions are censored. Hopefully, modern society in a country as advanced as the U.S. is civilized enough to realize that maturity cannot strive when young adults face a powerful and unjust restraint.
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Works Cited:
“Internet Censorship in Pakistan.” Nationmaster. 2005. Nationmaster.com. 31 Mar. 2008
Parker, Jen. “Group Stirs Debate on Legal Drinking Age.” 2007. 2008. Abcnews.com.
31 Mar. 2008
McCardell, John. McCardell and MADD Debate the Drinking Age at UVM.
UVM Campus. 22 Oct. 2007.
Seven Days. The Drinking Age. UVM Campus, Burlington Vermont. 26 Aug. 2007.
Hanson, David J. “Legal Drinking Age.” 1997. Potsdam.edu. 10 Apr. 2008
Balko, Radley. “Back to 18?” Reason Magazine. 12 Apr. 2007.
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