I had to search way too hard to find it in the comments so I ' ll say it again and make it very clear the Bill Muthafuckin Pullman gave the best speech in movie history in Independence Day . Also it wasn ' t so much a speech as it was a one liner but god damn when Harrison Ford said Get off my plane . in Air Force One . That shit spoke volumes <| sep |> Would you mind to develop ? I ' m curious to hear about your point of view . <| sep |> Here ' s a counter argument . I wanna preface by saying that I agree with you . So much in fact , that I think it should be lowered to 16 , if not lower . That being said , in America , this cannot happen . Why ? Education levels . Look at the countries where drinking at earlier ages is legal . Take Germany , for instance . There is a 3 tiered system , 141618 . At 14 you can drink Alcohol with your parents in restaurants , 16 you can drink beer , and 18 you can drink hard liquor . The reason for this , is that in Germany , a mealtime drink is a cup of wine or a small beer , something light and refreshing to go with your meal beer is a social beverage a night at the pub with friends , and hard liquor is for getting right fucked up at the disko and therefore 18 . Drinking is culturally ingrained in Germany to be a safe and fun activity , whether it be a night out to chill with friends or to get absolutely blithering stupid . There is little social stigma surrounding alcohol and in general , people are taught to not do stupid things like Drinking and driving that isn ' t to say that it doesn ' t happen but the rate is much lower than the USA . Take the USA as a comparison . In the USA , drinking is a sin . It ' s a widely done activity , but heavily frowned upon . Programs like MADD and DARE were colossal failures , and due to the lack of quality education readily available in the USA there is a steep decline in the quality of teaching , especially with highrisk children who are likely to turn to those sorts of solutions . This is really no secret . In my opinion , as a future teacher , the best way to teach about things like alcohol is not to scare kids and young adults into not doing it , but instead to create positivity around doing it while also adding in the sideeffects and dangers without the fear mongering that programs like DARE and MADD are known for . It ' s pretty much proven that when you create positivity around a stigmatised thing alcohol , sex , drugs there is less chance of rebellion andor the event occurring unsafely , which is really what this deal comes down to , safety while drinking alcohol . Anecdote in my household , I drank before turning 18 I live in Alberta , Canada , that ' s the age here , and I was very lucky to have parents who basically said , It ' s fine if you do it , it ' s a highschool thing , it ' s also fine if you don ' t do it , sobriety is also fun , just if you do , drink water and eat some chips or pickles or pizza and you ' ll be fine , don ' t be an idiot , and long story short I wasn ' t an idiot and I ' m turning out fine ! So that ' s my two cents on the issue .