Challenging the Legal Drinking Age Do current laws affecting the age at which adults can start drinking really make sense? There are many reasons why the government changed the legal drinking age to 21, but has this actually caused a decrease in the amount of alcohol consumed by people aged 18 to 21? Alcohol-related crime and road accidents have fallen in recent years, but the cause of this decline may not simply have to do with raising the drinking age, as the government would have you believe. There is a theory in psychology called Reactance Theory, which disagrees with the idea that by adopting more restrictive laws, alcohol consumption will slow down. The government's intent in lowering the legal drinking age was to decrease the number of negative outcomes resulting from irresponsible alcohol consumption. (Allen 34). By limiting drinking by young people, they thought they could reduce alcohol-related traffic accidents and crimes committed by young people. Since the last state adopted its 21 and over law, these activities have declined. But is it because of the new laws or other factors? The government would like us to believe that the new laws regulating underage drinking are completely dependent on the new laws, but there are other factors as well. The overall crime rate, not just those committed by young people, has decreased. When you statistically correlate the amount of crimes committed between 1987 and 1996, against the overall crime rate, you do not see a large decrease in crimes committed while young people were under the influence of alcohol. This shows that the crime rate had little effect, but what is the explanation why there is... middle of paper... at least some alcohol before the age of 21, and I'm sure they didn't ? find something wrong with it. The government should take a more common sense approach to making such laws and not succumb to political interference. Works Cited Aabacus DUI and Defensive Driving School. “Underage Drinking Statistics” http://dui-defensivedriving.com/du03002.html>Allen, Daniel, David Spenkel, and Patrick Vitale. “Reactance theory and alcohol consumption laws.” Journal of Studies on Alcohol 57 (July 1996): 34-40Kassin, Saul. Psychology. New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1998 Miller, Peter. “Measuring Alcohol and Tobacco Availability to Underage Students.” Addictive Behaviors 21 (September/October 1996): 585-95Roeper, Peter and Voas, Robert. “Underage drivers are separating drinking from driving.” American Journal of Public Health 89 (May 1999): 755-73.