The Right to Serve Protect and Drink.
There is a large significant difference between the lives of adolescences in the military and civilians. In the United States the legal drinking age is twenty-one for everyone. While in the United States military the legal drinking age is twenty one except when stationed in countries with a lower drinking age, like Korea, where the legal age is twenty. I feel the personnel in the military should be able to consume alcoholic beverages at the age of eighteen. While in the military a person is held to higher standards which means that they are subject to tougher and stricter laws. These laws fall under the UCMJ, which is the uniformed code of military justice. For every state and federal law in the U.S. there is an even stricter law for individuals in the military. For instance in the military if a person committed adultery he or she would be punished harshly. The maximum punishment for this act is reduction in rank and dishonorably discharged. This compared to the punishment of our commander and chief of the military is so contradicting. The only punishment that President Clinton received was a blemished record. .
Alcohol in our society serves a certain purpose. For most people it is used as a tool to relax or as a way to lose their inhibitions. For people in the military it is used as a stress reliever. People in the Armed Forces are put under an extreme amount of stress. For most of them the threat of going to war at any moment raises their stress level to high amounts. When they are in training the level of stress and frustration are raised intentionally so that they are able to deal with it, in a real world battle. The way that the training raises the stress level is they are only allowed to sleep the minimum amount of time required to function normally each day, which is four hours a day. Also they are required to do rigorous physical training daily.