I’m writing in response to the story “Legal drinking age protects teens” in your Oct. 15 Health section.

Drinking has been an issue in our country from the very beginning. One must also not forget the Prohibition Act of the 1920s.

And if you were to look at statistics and polls, you might think that restricting drinking as much as possible will do some good— until you take a look at other countries.

Most countries in Europe have a drinking age well below 18, and drunken driving rates and cases of binge drinking are astronomically less in those countries than they are here.

Having such a high drinking age doesn’t prevent teens from drinking; all it does is move drinking to a more unsafe and less controllable environment.

If teens were to start legally drinking at an earlier age, they could be taught to drink responsibly, instead of learning bad drinking habits from uninhibited peers. Chris Sherwood Thousand Oaks