Good luck, Sign Guy.
In this debate, I have been asked to defend the claim that military personnel should not be allowed to drink alcohol at the young age of 18. For me, this is a crazy debate to have and I will attempt to show you how allowing military personnel to alcohol both helps no one and furthers no cause to inebriate the youth of America. I will first look at some of the claims that people have put forward to defend the issue that military personnel should be allowed to drink alcohol at the age 18 and then give my own claims as to why they should not.
People as young as prepubescent teenagers can get alcohol. I do not live in the states but my cousin does. Every week, me and my Mum sit down on Skype and talk to my aunt, uncle and my 16 year old American Cousin. When I ask her what she did at the weekend, she says so very typically, “I went to a party and got really drunk with some of my friends”. No one seems to mind, to be honest. Mainly because 18 is the legal drinking age in the UK but my aunt goes crazy over it. Upon being questioned by Mum about it, my aunt always seems to say, well they were in a house drinking at least I know she is safe. Are you fucking serious!? Do you have any idea how these people may have gotten the alcohol to drink in the first place? It’s clear to me that making it possible for younger people to get alcohol would only excel the trend of underage drinking. In my mind, the US should be working towards stopping the prevalent trend of underage drinking instead of giving the privilege to more people who will generally not keep the alcohol to themselves. Making alcohol more accessible to youths is a bad idea.
Then there is the claim that military personnel “can take a bullet for their country but cannot drink alcohol in it”. This is a stupid argument and only the most naïve of people would attempt to raise it. You see, it makes no sense to say that. People can join the military at age 18 and get to hold all sorts of weapons. Yet, in America, they are not allowed to own a handgun until age 21. You can imagine that when Military personnel at age 18 have some leave and come home, they will want to celebrate another job well don. You can also bet that they have friends that are under 21. How can you even attempt to stop the trend of underage drinking if you are making it even easier to allow underage drinking to happen, regardless of whether they are fighting for your country or not.
Another thing that puts this argument beyond doubt is that Military personnel are generally engaged in conflict with people who are trying to push their own laws onto the general public. You look at the war in Iraq and the war seems to be against the tyrannical rule of some. How can you expect your soldiers to be fighting for equality in these countries, which means that everyone is equal, when in their own country they have privileges that other people their age do not? The greatest hypocrisy would be prevalent and just completely nonsensical.
Then you have the greatest argument for this debate. If I told you that you could drink at age 18 because you were in the army and got to carry about guns all day, would you want to? This may seem like a silly point but to my mind, at age 18 in this country, we were all so desperate to drink and have fun that we would have probably done it. Giving them privileges like underage drinking only glamorises the military and urges more people to join, probably for the wrong reasons.
