By Kristin Arola
Daily Editorial Page Writer
 |
| JEANNIE SERVAAS/Daily Although 18-year-olds are old enough to vote, drive and potentially be drafted, they are not legally allowed to drink alcohol. |
Being a devout Libertarian, I strongly believe when you become an adult, you should have the choice to do what you desire, as long as it's not hurting anyone else. If you're stupid enough to ruin your lungs by smoking cigarettes, by all means go ahead. If you want to grow a few pot plants in your basement, it's not hurting me. And considering you are an adult, you should certainly be allowed to drink alcohol.
As adults, why can't we choose to do with, and put into our bodies, what we want? The government likes to make us think they believe we're responsible citizens - responsible enough to fight for our country if a draft ever arises - yet they continue to waste billions of dollars on the drug war and deny legal adults access to alcohol.
The National Minimum Drinking Age Act of 1986 forces states to have a minimum drinking age of 21. What does this law accomplish? As a 20-year-old, three-year veteran of the University, I have never had a problem finding alcohol. The only downside to the drinking age is not being allowed into bars. Then again, spending a Friday night in a jam-packed meat-market is not necessarily my idea of a good time. Walk around the streets on a weekend night and you are bound to find a house party with plenty of beer to go around.
I have never had a problem accessing alcohol. Since I've been a teenager, I can make a few phone calls, or simply walk to the store, and within minutes find somebody to buy for me. The drinking age does not keep teens from drinking, it just makes drinking seem even more rebellious. To this day, if I can get served at a bar I feel like I've accomplished something, that I'm doing something wrong. My mind immediately moves into a juvenile chant "breaking the law, breaking the law!"
Being an adult, it is ridiculous that I can't order a glass of wine with dinner, or go to the bar for a few drinks with friends. With all of the other choices given to me when I turn 18, what I decide to put into my body should be nobody's business but mine.
On that note, I should also be legally allowed to partake in the smoking of marijuana. In 1988 the DEA's own chief administrative law judge, Francis Young, ruled "marijuana, in its natural form, is one of the safest therapeutically active substance known to man." Yet the government continues to ignore studies, classifying marijuana in the same categories as crack and heroin.
Granted, sitting around all day smoking pot isn't necessarily a wise thing to do, yet who is the government to tell me what I can and cannot put into my adult body. If I want to spend all day in a stoner coma on the couch, flipping channels and eating peanut butter, why does the government care?
Prohibition didn't work in the past, and it's obvious to me and everyone I know (including my grandparents) that it isn't working again. Last year more than 589,000 American were arrested on marijuana charges; 86 percent of those were for simple possession.
Even scarier is that another marijuana smoker is arrested every 54 seconds. We're spending billions of tax dollars per year on a war that will never be won.
Once we turn 18, we are adults. We should have the choice to do with our bodies what we so desire. A 21-year-old drinking age and a marijuana prohibition trample the civil rights of all Americans. In the words of Mark Twain, "Now what I contend is that my body is my own, at least I have always so regarded it. If I do harm through my experimenting with it, it is I who suffers, not the state."
We are all adults here. Let's be treated like it.
09-03-97
should be sent to: daily.letters@umich.edu | should be sent to: online.daily@umich.edu |