Believe it or not, I'm actually for lowering the drinking age to 18, THAT BEING SAID..A lot of it would require parents raising their kids in a way similar to how my parents raised me. I'm half Italian. Wine is a common thing. When I was 2, I asked my dad for a sip of his beer. Two seconds later I was spitting it out and running for the nearest juice box. Basically, my parents always said: Look, alcohol exists. When consumed properly and in moderation, it is not a bad thing. Yet when consumed in excess, this is what happens. I think it also 'helped' (as sad as I am to say it) that I knew alcoholics, and could see firsthand what an excess does to someone. Trust me, that point isn't pretty. But, what happened? My sister RARELY drinks (a good second part of that had to do with her being the RA who had to clean up after the drunk freshmen..NOT. FUN. according to her)..and then we have my brother.
This past summer, my 15 year old brother (along with some of his 16-18 year old friends) decided to have a party in a tent in my backyard, and they drank. Guess what? THESE KIDS DIDN'T KNOW WHAT PROOF MEANT!!!! Never mind that, they have no concept of pacing themselves. They're downing hard liquor barely mixed with anything. I wake up the next morning to a furious Momma: They all got SO SICK from their stupidity that the ones who drank ended up puking half the night and the ones who didn't were so annoyed by them that they left. She clearly found out once she saw the disaster and realized somebody left the next morning (and she didn't know why). She let my brother sleep a bit, then forced him to get up and clean up the entire mess himself. She then called all the kids over and said: 'Look. I'M not going to tell your parents. It is, however, YOUR responsibility to do so and let them know that you screwed up.' Lo and behold, every parent ended calling up my mom because their kids all confessed. Moral of the story: Alcohol is tolerable. Stupid behavior isn't.