The proposal by many college presidents that the legal drinking age be lowered to 18 is just common sense. The binge-drinking phenomenon simply didn't exist in my youth during the 1950s, when the legal age was younger than 21.
Kids need to learn how to drink sensibly as early as possible. They should learn it from their parents at home, not in secret to defy them. We let them do something really dangerous – drive a car – when they are 16, and they can get married at that age, and, when they are 18, they can die for their country.
The hysterical anti-drinking rants that we hear every day are exactly the kind of stupidity that led to Prohibition, which simply taught everyone in the U.S. to disobey the law.
Karl Ziebarth, Dallas
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