and society that it is too late for a complete elimination. The only thing that can be done is to find ways in which to decrease its consumption. As far as decreasing drinking abuse in general, there are two main controlling points: education and the legal drinking age. Most countries have different drinking ages, most ranging from 18 to 21. The United States has a drinking age of 21 but certainly, in juxtaposition to other countries, does not have the least alcohol consumption per capita. The best things that governments and societies can use to decrease alcohol consumption are these two controlling points mentioned above (Wood 47). Drinking age, in a large part is correlated to maturity. When a person is believed to be mature, this person can be said to have the ability to take on privileges and responsibilities only a mature person can handle. One of these is the drinking of alcohol. Therefore, the best age for the legal privilege for drinking alcohol is that where an average person is said to be mature- 18 years of age.
             The United States has been trying to eliminate alcohol abuse ever since the 1850's when some of the states declared a law of complete abolishment for alcohol. Because of the highly negative results which this law provided, the law had to be eliminated. Once again in 1920, the United States declared complete abolishment but this time for the whole nation. This produced public demonstrations, economic failure, and most importantly, drug consumption went up dramatically. Most people stopped drinking alcohol but referred to even worse addictive drugs such as marijuana and cocaine. Finally, this law had to be eliminated and the drinking age remained 18 until 1984 when the drinking age was declared to be 21. So far, over 15 years have gone by and the results do not seem to be very positive. A question that many people explore is that of why 21? The government of the United States has in many occasions referred to p...