Many advocates of a lower drinking age see hypocrisy in a culture that allows 18 years to live independently, vote, work, get married, serve in the armed forces and purchase firearms but not to drink alcohol.

John McCardell, former president at Middlebury College and the founder of the Web site chooseresponsibility.org, feels that the 21-year-old drinking age is detrimental to young people.

"The 21-year-old drinking age is bad social policy and terrible law," McCardell wrote in The New York Times on Sept. 13, 2004. "It is astonishing that college students have thus far acquiesced in so egregious an abridgment of the age of majority."

McCardell feels that the 21 drinking age leads to unsupervised drinking, binge drinking and breeds a disrespect for law and forces ethical compromises. Underage drinkers break the law, often going to extravagant lengths to do so.

Andy (last name withheld by request), a 23-year-old senior at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, got around the drinking age for several years with the use of a fake ID.

"A guy gave it to me, I didn't pay for it," Andy said. "When I turned 21, I passed it on to someone else. A lot of people have them, but more bars are using scanners now so it's a little different."

Andy's friend, Matt (last name withheld), a recent UWM graduate, said that many IDs are handed down by siblings and that people who use them worry about getting caught.

"You get to know places to go to," he said. "You can't go to Landmark (Lanes) with a fake ID. At places like Judge's and R.C.'s, you're pretty safe. At places like Paddy's (Pub), it's hit and miss."

McCardell feels that the risks of allowing drinking for people under 21 can be offset with education and the creation of a drinking "license," which would be revocable for underage offenses.

"What is lacking is an approach to alcohol education that consists of more than temperance lectures and scare tactics, that involves parents, and that assumes that most young adults and their families most of the time will, if given the chance, behave responsibly," McCardell wrote recently.

"Would it ever occur to us, when a young person reaches legal driving age, simply to say, "Here are the keys. You figure it out. Good luck. Our state forfeits 10 percent of its highway funds if I get into the car with you."

Yet that is precisely what Legal Age 21 says to young adults. Education, and licensing, offer a more promising way to deal with the reality of alcohol in the lives of young adults than denial or prohibition.