You can fight for your country at 18 but can't order a drink

When you are eighteen you become entitled to certain things: the ability to purchase tobacco, the ability to go to prison, and the ability to go and fight for your country. Now many of these things don't sound to appealing to me and I'm sure there are others who agree with me. Since an eighteen year old can have the ability to ruin their life with tobacco, possibly get put into jail with men three times their age, and the possiblity of being killed in combat why can't they buy a beer when they go to a restaurant?

This doesn't seem right to me at all. Now some may be thinking "Oh this is just another young person trying to get the legal age lowered because all they like to do is party." However you couldnt be more wrong. My motivation behind getting the age lowered wouldn't be so I could get drunk easier but rather to prevent many deaths that occur due to unresponsible drinking.

Kids under the age of twenty one are practicing more effective and dangerous ways of acheiving their desired level of drunkeness. Many are taking to drinking games such as beer pong and flip cup. Drinking games are much more denagerous than regular drinking because of the increased amounts of alcohol one consumes in such a short amount of time. Another dangerous practice popular among youngsters is "pre-gaming". "Pre-gaming" is drinking before you go out to avoid getting caught with alcohol on your person. Often times people consume hard liquor in larger quantities when drinking beforehand, and don't realize that they've consumed more than they should have before its too late.

I believe the most effective way to prevent these dangerous practices is to lower the legal drinking age. There are many positives that could come from doing this. Lowering the age would lessen the adrenaline rush attained from getting alcohol illegaly thus taking some of the fun out of drinking for most. Also being able to drink at a younger age would allow for parents to teach their children ways to moderate their drinking. Building this relationship between parent and child would be important because then the child would be more comfortable calling their parents for a ride when to intoxicated to drive. All in all lowering the age would have a postive effect on how younger people perceive and use alcohol.

Legalize it?

According to the National Survery of Drug Use and Health roughly 25.8 million people have admitted to using cannabis a.k.a marijuana at one point in their lifetime and 15.2 million have admitted to using it in the past month. With this staggering amount of people using this drug it has the potential to create a 10 billion dollar tax revenue for our country. On November 2nd of this year (2010) Proposition 19 was put on the ballot to be voted on for legalization of marijuana in California. This proposition was voted down with 54 percent voting No and 46 percent voting Yes. However with so many people using this drug and the potential money it could bring in being so high, why hasn't our government legalized marijuana yet?

Well there are always two sides to the story.

Lets explore marijuana's pros and cons before you decide what should be done about the drug. First off the pros, if the drug would be legalized then our police forces could focus their efforts on arresting more serious criminal offenders, such as rapists and murderers. With marijuana being an underground drug there is potential for the product to be tampered with before people use it, if legalized the FDA would be able to regulate the quality of the drug making it safer for people to use. Lastly, large drug cartels would ultimately lose business because states could cultivate their own plants. This could decrease drug related crimes and murders happening in our country.

Now the cons. Marijuana is often used by most people as a gateway drug to more dangerous drugs such as cocaine and heroine. Legalizing marijuana would also raise the amount of car accidents that occur while being high. This would also increase the likelihood of younger kids getting ahold of the drug at an earlier age similar to problems we face with alcohol nowadays.

With the pros and cons, what is your stance on the legalization of marijuana? Is there any hope for it being legalized in our country? Or is marijuana doomed to be forever illegal?