![where is it legal to drink at 18 where is it legal to drink at 18](https://media.phillyvoice.com/media/images/020421_Gritty_Portrait_Flyers.2e16d0ba.fill-1200x630-c0.jpg)
"Essentially what the current law says is that until you are 21 you lack the judgment and the maturity to drink," McCardell said. Two factors are cited most in efforts to lower the drinking age: that binge drinking among college students has reached epidemic proportions, and that tens of thousands of young servicemen and women are fighting a war for a nation in which they cannot legally buy a beer, the very argument that persuaded many states to lower their drinking ages at the height of the war in Vietnam. "If you lower the drinking age, people are going to die," said Jeffrey Levy, a member of MADD's national board of directors whose son died in an alcohol-related crash. It further has argued that when 29 states lowered their drinking ages in the 1970s, virtually all of them saw drunken highway deaths spike. In voicing its opposition to the current proposals, MADD has highlighted statistics showing that highway drunken-driving fatalities have declined precipitously since the drinking age was raised.
![where is it legal to drink at 18 where is it legal to drink at 18](http://dailybuzzlive.com/wp-content/uploads/drinkingage-1.jpg)
Yet it is clear that these fledgling efforts to amend the drinking age will face significant opposition - from Congress, from a large segment of American parents and from influential national lobbying groups such as Mothers Against Drunk Driving. "What we're beginning to see are the early indications that the public is at least ready to consider re-examining this issue," said John McCardell, a former Vermont college president who runs Choose Responsibility, a non-profit group that advocates alcohol education for young adults and favors lowering the drinking age to 18. And in South Carolina and Wisconsin, lawmakers have proposed that active-duty military personnel younger than 21 be allowed to buy alcohol, a move similar to one that was rejected last year in New Hampshire. In South Dakota, a petition is circulating that would ask the state to allow 19- and 20-year-olds to legally buy beer no stronger than 3.2 percent alcohol, while in Missouri a group is attempting to collect the 100,000 signatures needed to get a measure on the November ballot to lower the state's drinking age to 18. In Vermont, the state Legislature has formed a task force that will study whether the drinking age should be lowered. Serious discussions already are under way in several states. set the national drinking age at 21, a movement is gaining traction to revisit the issue and consider allowing Americans as young as 18 to legally consume alcohol. Chicago Tribune (MCT) CHICAGO - More than two decades after the U.S.