Drinking Age for Militarr

This topic is near and dear to my heart. I'm in the military and this conversation comes up often during training for deployments. Military personnel under the age of 21 should be allowed to consume alcoholic beverages. I wouldn't mind if they had to even be supervised while doing so. I have felt like this since the beginning of my career. I joined at the age of 17.

Most people thought I just wanted to drink but that was never my whole reason. Don't get me wrong, I wanted to drink but I just never rally understood the rule anyway. I don't understand how someone can be allowed to serve their country, and possibly get killed, but can't have a drink when they want one. Some people like to say "Oh, they aren't obligated by law to serve but the drinking age is law." As I said before, I was only 17 years of age when I joined.

The legal age to purchase and consume alcohol is 21 years of age. I was pretty quickly deployed after I got to my first base. Granted, I didn't drink at the time, but under the circumstances, I think that if our team and squad leaders had offered us beer before going away to war, there shouldn't be any issues about it. If we are able to go off and risk our safety or our lives, then there should not be a problem with having a few beers with our friends.

My first duty station was in Germany. I didn't notice until I got back from my deployment that the drinking age for military was 18 there. Most people thought it was a bad idea to let us drink unsupervised but most of the drinking related incidents came from those who were already over the age of 21. I honestly believe the 21 and under crowd handled themselves a little better than the rest when it came to drinking. I'm not saying none of the younger crowd got in trouble but it was less often.