“An individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law.”
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
You own yourself, don’t you? When you turn 16 society permits you to drive on public roads. When you turn 18 society permits you to vote for representation, to guide laws that you’ve already had to live under your whole life. Then when you turn 21 society permits you to drink alcohol.
People may claim that this is justified, that you have no right to those roads because you do not yet pay taxes. That you have no right to vote because you would not yet be held fully accountable for crimes you commit. But there are a number of people who receive in government aid, far more than they pay in taxes (if they pay anything at all.) Are they denied driver’s licenses? And aren’t many minors often tried as adults for crimes?
So why have a minimum drinking age above that of legal adulthood? This is not simply about access to a public works or the defense of needing some arbitrary line where society says you’re an adult (If it were, then why not make the drinking age 18?) This is about having the right to do what you want with your own body.
