About our cause:

Our goal is to prevent irresponsible underage drinking of minors, to provide them with a safe drinking environment and to promote responsible drinking. The legal drinking age should be lowered to 18. Once 18, a person is legally considered an adult and therefore should be able to drink. Lowering the drinking age will not only give 18-year-olds the rights and recognition they deserve as adults, but will also obliterate a largely ineffective law that only serves to create more red tape. At the age of 18, a U.S. citizen can vote in an election, defend and possibly die for their country and make all kinds of decisions regarding their life and body. At the age of 18, young adults are old enough to make their own decisions regarding alcohol.  

"The overall advantage is we're not trying to enforce a law that's unenforceable. The abuse of alcohol and the over-consumption of alcohol and DUI driving. Those are the areas we've gotta focus our efforts. Not on chasing kids around trying to give 'em a ticket for having a cup of beer in their hand." -Mark Beckner, Chief of Police in Boston

Why We Should Lower the Drinking Age:

1. Any benefits of the 21 year-old drinking age have come to be more than offset by unintended and largely negative consequences.
   
2. The 21 year-old drinking age is an abridgement of the age of majority.
3. The 21 year-old drinking age marginalizes the role of parents in the process of teaching and encouraging responsible decisions about alcohol use.
4. Under the 21 year-old drinking age, fewer young people are drinking, but those who do choose to are drinking more. This alarming rise in the rates of binge drinking on campuses and in communities around the nation has caused a major, national public health problem.
5. The 21 year-old drinking age breeds disrespect for law and ethical compromises.

Supporters
-John Mc Cardell former president of Middlebury college initiated a movement in 2008 called the Amethyst(Greek for against Intoxication) Initiative, a group that supports responsible adult behavior towards alcohol. 
- The purpose of the group was to call on law makers to lower the drinking age to 18. Lowering the drinking age would reduce the amount of alcohol related incidents in colleges as well as creating the safest environment for individuals. A study showed that over 500,000 full time students enrolled in 4 year universities suffered alcohol related injuries and 1,700 die in accidents. 
-100's of other colleges joined the group including; Syracuse, Tufts, Colgate, Kenyon and Morehouse.
-It seeks an informed passionate debate over the issue and federal highway law that made 21 the de facto national drinking age by denying money to any state that does not do so. 
-"it is a law that the people at whom it is directed believe is unjust and unfair and discriminatory"
Website: http://www.chooseresponsibility.org/home/
Link to Signators: http://www.theamethystinitiative.org/signatories/

Opposing Views
-University of Miami President Donna Shalala, who served as secretary of health and human services under President Bill Clinton, declined to sign. "I remember college campuses when we had 18-year-old drinking ages, and I honestly believe we've made some progress," Shalala said . "To just shift it back down to the high schools makes no sense at all."

 -Henry Wechsler of the Harvard School of Public Health. "I wish these college presidents sat around and tried to work out ways to deal with the problem on their campus rather than try to eliminate the problem by defining it out of existence," he said.
-"I understand why colleges are doing it, because it splits their students, and they like to treat them all alike rather than having to card some of them. It's a nuisance to them," said Henry Wechsler of the Harvard School of Public Health.

- Mothers against drunk driving(MADDS) strongly oppose the idea of lowering the drinking because it would be irresponsible and increases drunk driving fatalities. The 21 year old drinking age has reduced drunk driving, underage drinking and binge drinking. 

Source-http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/education/2008-08-18-college-drinking_N.htm