By Logan Davis, Staff Writer
Age requirements in the U.S. quite frankly do not make sense.
There is no reason why someone can go fight and die for their country but can’t drink alcohol.
Please consider even less extreme scenarios such as booking a hotel room. This one hits pretty close to home with me, because my friends and I went down to Mississippi for a football game. We arrived at midnight and stopped at a hotel we had already booked. We gave him our IDs and he told us we couldn’t sleep there since we weren’t 21. So, we then had to hop from hotel to hotel trying to find somewhere that lets 19-year-olds stay.
After two hours of searching, we never found one and we decided to just sleep in the car. This seemed like a great idea until we saw someone about 40 feet from us be arrested at gunpoint. Eventually, after what felt like forever, a hotel let us in on the condition we told no one.
I can understand restrictions for hotels with alcohol in each room. However, it doesn’t make any sense as to why three guys who already live by themselves can’t sleep in a hotel room. Instead, we were put in danger by not having anywhere to sleep.
Another instance of U.S. age restrictions being all over the place is how a person straight out of high school can get drafted to fight a war with which they don’t want anything to do. However, they can’t buy a drink or smoke a cigarette legally.
A third example is that the age to drive is 16 in the U.S. In 2016, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reported 37,461 people killed in car crashes in the U.S. alone. There are way more fatalities from driving then there are from vaping or drinking alcohol without driving.
Countries around the world, such as Germany, set the driving age at 18, which at least is consistent with what most view as the age of an adult.
Another odd thing about age requirments is that the age it takes to rent a car from a rental agency is 25. If I could fly a plane all the way there by myself, there should be no reason as to why I can’t drive around. I can already drive my own car.
The people who make these age requirements just make assumptions based on the fact someone is not 21, or in this case, 25. A somewhat overlooked age requirement is the age to be on the presidential ballot: 35. What an absolutely odd number.
We are back to the scenario of an 18-year-old being able to die for these 35-year-olds,even though they cannot run for the leadership position themselves.
Some might say the age should be 21 for all of these, but the requirement doesn’t account for the age someone lives on their own. There isn’t one perfect age for each situation, but there could be an attempt to make all the ages more consistent. We should be making all of them the age of 18: the age of aduldhood
While some people may see this as just an argument a college student is making to be able to drink, let me assure you that it’s more than that. The U.S. has a serious age requirement problem that must be fixed; the inconsistencies seem as if every age was picked at random.
If someone is able to live on their own, they should be able to make their own choices in their life.