Alcohol and Amsterdam: International students’ opinions on America’s minimum legal drinking age (Final)

The minimum legal drinking age in the United States of America is 21-years of age. This is the highest minimum drinking age in the world. Other countries that share the same drinking age as The United States include countries like Pakistan and Sri Lanka. The majority of the world’s minimum drinking age is the same age that you can vote in our country ­– eighteen years of age.

For Northern Arizona University in particular, there are a demographic of students that find this law harder to adapt to than others. For Dutch student Sanne Verlumer, it is more about the implication behind the drinking age that bothers her.

“It was a very big culture shock coming here and having to adapt to that way of life,” said Verlumer.

The majority of international students attending NAU are under the age of 21, according to NAU’s Center for International Education. This prohibits these students from participating in an activity that they have already become accustomed to through their young adult life.

According to Verlumer, it has less to do with the logistics of laws on the States, and more to do with the morals and culture of our country. She believes that Americans are stubborn, and that has more to do with the law than the moral implications. “Americans are Americans. They have their way of thinking, and it is hard to convince them otherwise,” said Verlumer “It might seem normal while you’re in it, but that’s the point. It is all about what you are used to, and that is why America probably won’t change anytime soon.”

On the other hand, Verlumer also believes that most of her fellow domestic peers at NAU would take advantage of an earlier minimum drinking age. Verlumer supposes that there are always going to be students who illegally consume and purchase alcohol, but for a large number of students, this is not the case.

“When I was growing up, the drinking age was 16, but they just recently changed the minimum age to 18 because of many of the reasons why America has kept theirs at 21,” said Verlumer.

Danish student, 20, Yvette Knoops believes that the drinking age in America can be harmful to international students as whole. In her home country of Denmark, the minimum legal drinking age is 18 years of age. Knoops developed a healthy relationship with alcohol consumption; drinking with friends and family on vacations and special occasions. Once Knoops started studying in America, she felt as though she had to leave a part of her culture back home, merely because of her age.

“ I was actually at a party last Friday, and everyone there decided to go downtown to the bars, and I had to just say ‘Okay have fun’, and just go home,” said Knoops.

What is most difficult for Knoops in particular, is that she feels as though she approaches alcohol more maturely than the majority of her domestic peers, but because of her age, the law regards her as too young to healthily consume alcohol.

Although Verlumer believes that alcohol is approached more casually in Europe, she doesn’t necessarily believe that the people are any more mature, especially in her home country of Holland.

“At the bars in The Netherlands, you can just go to a bar, and drink and drink until you basically can’t any longer, and then you can just simply bike home, and no one really cares,” said Verlumer. “After drinking at a bar here in the states, I tried biking home and people were shouting at me and calling me crazy. Officially, it is also illegal in The Netherlands, but how else are you supposed to get home in some of these cities?”

Ultimately, understanding each other’s cultures can help shed perspective on our own culture, and with the minimum legal drinking age as it is, America is certainly an outlier in the industrialized world on their ideologies behind alcohol consumption.