A stated advantage of lowering the legal drinking age is the increase of young people who will start drinking at bars instead of at home unsupervised. However, with bar drinking comes driving. Unfortunately, many people drive to the bar, which means they must drive home afterwards. In most cases, when drinking at home or in the dorm, there is nowhere to drive afterwards.
One of the most anticipated problems with lowering the legal drinking age will be the availability of fake IDs. Individuals who are below the legal drinking age will be able to get a hold of fake IDs more readily. Because the age on the ID will be younger, a younger underage individual may get away with buying alcohol illegally more easily. Moreover, the fake ID business will have the opportunity to expand, since the change of the LDA will affect first year university students. The more opportunity to drink in Universities can predict a drinking epidemic among students.
Furthermore, research was conducted from 1982 to 1987 when the legal drinking age was 18. The results were compared to the increase of the legal drinking age after 1987. In University settings, the results show the statistics of students being sick from alcohol (vomiting) went from 46% to 50%, skipping class 9% of the time to 12%, and grades lowered from drinking went from 5% to 7% (http://www.howard-winn.k12.ia.us/projects/ind_stdy06/ac/drink/page2.html#).
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