Why the drinking age needs to be higher

The current legal drinking age of the US is apparently not doing well; I think that just because someone is 21, doesn’t necessarily make them mature enough to drink. In fact, there has to be a standard for drinking, because it is mainly the college students that are known for binge drinking. There has to be restrictions on who get to drink legally, based on accountability. Some people don’t take their responsibilities serious into later on in life.
I think that the drinking age should not be lowered to 18, because there was a trend in the past of high death rates amongst teenagers from underage drinking(taken from NHSTA http://www.nhtsa.dot.gov/people/injury/research/pub/age-of-drinking/pub2/discussion.htm ), by having the standard set at 21, teen deaths are decreased. Logically at 21 yrs. Old, they should know the importance of being responsible. But this is only for the US, because the age of maturity is different in other cultures. In the US, the age of maturity differs for everyone, so there has to be a standard that everyone can follow.
Compared to everyone else, we are one of the four countries that have the drinking age set four 21. Japan has the age set at 20, along with Iceland and Paraguay. From that the other ages are 16 to 19; however, there are countries with no real age for drinking. Yet, some cultures forbid drinking at any age. For more information about different countries legal age of drinking go to: http://www2.potsdam.edu/hansondj/LegalDrinkingAge.html. This goes back to the fact that based on certain cultures; there are different traditions, which results in different ages of maturity. For the United States we are a mixed culture, not everyone has the same traditions or beliefs, causing everyone to mature at a different age.
I think that there are some 18 year olds that are responsible enough to drink alcohol. Yet, it is not enough to lower the legal age. It just goes back to the fact that not everyone is mature at the same age to drop the standard. Going back to my first paragraph, the ability to drink should be based on how accountable the person is.