Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
Lowering the United States legal drinking age
The effect of drinking and driving
The effect of drinking and driving
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: Lowering the United States legal drinking age
An ongoing debate has been occurring trying to decide if the legal drinking age should remain at 21 or be lowered. Teenagers seem to be consuming alcohol with no regard to the legal age. Drinking underage can lead to many problems but these problems can potentially be resolved by lowering the drinking age. Taking a look at some of the myths verse the realities will help grasp why the drinking age to consume alcohol is legally 21. In today’s society many myths contribute to underage people consuming alcohol. Many of these people do not know the realities of these myths. One myth that has been proven wrong multiple times is that “I can sober up quickly by taking a cold shower or drinking coffee .” It is a proven fact that it takes two to three …show more content…
On medical terms, lowering the drinking age opens up the possibility to interfere with the development of a young adult’s brain and opens up to greater vulnerability to addiction to alcohol. Lowering the drinking age to 18 will allow more people to drink in bars in which will result to more unsafe drivers on the road getting behind the wheel while being intoxicated. Lowering the drinking age also makes underage adults more vulnerable to sexual misconduct and unsafe environments. While the argument at hand is lowering the legal drinking age to under 21 many believe the legal drinking age should stay at 21. Taking a look at the positive attributes that came from establishing the drinking age at 21 will help solidify why people do not want to change the legal drinking age. Keeping the legal drinking age at 21 ensures that fewer motor vehicle accidents will occur each year. It has also proven that students in states that had a drinking age of 18 had a high school dropout rate thirteen times greater than states with a legal drinking age of 21. This allows for more school age children to be on the streets getting into more trouble than staying in school and getting a proper
In this article Aguirre talks about the possible benefits of having a raised minimum legal drinking age. She talks about the fact that lowering the drinking age would create a safer venue for young adults to drink. She also says that a lowered drinking age would limit the amount of binge drinking, which would also limit the amounts of deaths caused by binge
Lowering the legal drinking age would create problems such as infringing on the mental and physical development of the young drinker. As a respected author, Matt Nagin puts it, “The late teens and early twenties are formative years where character building, leadership in the community, and scholastic excellence should be emphasized. Alcohol detracts from all of these.” In other words, Nagin believes that the teen years are an imperative time of growth in a person’s life. Scientists have proven that the brain is not fully developed until the age of twenty five. If Nagin’s argument is correct, and I believe it is, then people should understand that scientists have proven the negative affects that alcohol has on the development of the brain. Alcohol has the power to kill brain cells and damage growth hormones. By making alcohol legally accessible to an eighteen year old, we are literally poisoning his or her brain.
This issue hit home for me because it puts many people at risk for things such as car accidents, binge drinking, alcoholism, depression, suicide, and rape, things no one should ever experience, let alone in middle or high school. These reasons are why the legal age to purchase, and consume alcohol should remain at 21 years of age.
Young adults find it fun to have sexual intercourse when they are drunk, which leads to pregnancy because they don’t think about condoms when they are drunk because they don’t think before they act. Alcohol also impairs vision, which many young adults end up in fatal car accidents because of heavy drinking, and driving. Which may cause some issues. An article by the New York Times “Lowering the Drinking Age Has Serious Consequences” by Tara Watson explains the only reason why the drinking age was raised to 21 was because of the serious issues happening on a daily basis. “.when many states moved from a minimum of 18 to 21.
There has been debate on what age should people drink. Many think we should be able to drink at 18 or many people think we should be able to drink at the age 21 or older. Both cases makes some good points of why. There shouldn’t be any debate at all because bottom line the age limit on drinking is fine where it is for many reasons.
Lowering the drinking age to 18 would make a lot of sense in the world. Lowering the drinking age to 18 would make more sense. It would be better for the teens that drink on college campus. The drinking age should be lowered to 18 because you can vote at eighteen, buy tobacco, it’ll reduce the thrill of breaking the law, evidence supports that early introduction of drinking is the safest way to reduce juvenile alcohol abuse, and college people that are not 21 drink also.
According to Andrew Herman, “Each year, 14,000 die from drinking too much. 600,000 are victims of alcohol related physical assault and 17,000 are a result of drunken driving deaths, many being innocent bystanders” (470). These massive numbers bring about an important realization: alcohol is a huge issue in America today. Although the problem is evident in Americans of all ages, the biggest issue is present in young adults and teens. In fact, teens begin to feel the effects of alcohol twice as fast as adults and are more likely to participate in “binge-drinking” (Sullivan 473). The problem is evident, but the solution may be simple. Although opponents argue lowering the drinking age could make alcohol available to some teens not mature enough to handle it, lowering the drinking age actually teaches responsibility and safety in young adults, maintains consistency in age laws, and diminishes temptation.
Lowering the drinking age from twenty-one to eighteen is a good idea because it will most likely promote responsibility, alcohol consumption will be more controlled, and, if not done so, it is posing as discrimination against the eighteen to twenty age group; however, lowering the legal drinking age back to eighteen can be fatal because the brains of the eighteen to twenty year old age groups are not fully developed, binge drinking and alcohol addiction rates will go up, and the drinking and driving rates will increase.
were drinking to get drunk than their counterparts a decade earlier, and one recent study reported an increase, just since 1994, in the number of students who drink deliberately to get drunk? (Smith 1). I interviewed my friend Shelly Mitchell who recently turned twenty-one and asked her how she felt about finally being legal to drink. She quoted, ?It is not as exciting to drink anymore, I mean I still like to go out with my friends to bars, but the fun is all over, in high school and college it was so exciting trying to get alcohol by using a fake ID.? All of these factors could be changed by lowering the drinking age to eighteen. In a study done by the Harvard School of Public Health, binge drinking is defined as five drinks in a row for boys and four drinks for girls. And when they did a survey they found that 44% of the students attending Harvard binge drink (Jeffrey Kluger 1).
...e minimum legal drinking age in the United States should remain at twenty-one years old. Since the National Legal Drinking Age Act was ratified, the consumption of liquor among minors has abated significantly. With the restriction in affect, the United States is definitely a safer place when it comes to alcohol use. Even though, the reduction of the drinking age would get rid of the taboo that surrounds alcohol which would result in fewer teens drinking just to be accepted by their peers, young adolescents now have a harder time getting access to alcohol due to the minimum legal drinking age resulting in less alcohol-affiliated problems and a decrease in damage to their bodies. Teens and alcohol are not a good mix so citizens of the United States should keep them separated as best as they can. By having a minimum age limit of twenty-one, that is a great way to do it.
The main reason the drinking age was increased was the persuasion by large interest groups, such as MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Driving). Their main arguments for raising the legal drinking age to 21 was so that the law could protect people under that age and keep them safe. Authorities state that they enforce the underage drinking law for personal safety. MADD’s goal is to put “mandatory ignition interlocks in place for all convicted drunk drivers and the development of advanced technology that will one day make cars inoperable by someone who is drunk.” They believe this will save hundreds of thousands of lives.
Lawmakers should not consider lowering the drinking age from twenty-one to eighteen. Despite the deep value this country places on freedom, personal liberties, and personal responsibilities, the data shows that public safety is greatly at risk if the drinking age were to be lowered to twenty-one. A variety of groups believe that the drinking age should be lowered to eighteen deeming that the twenty-one law is unconstitutional. On the opposing side, people agree that the law helps to protect our young people and the communities where they live.
According to the drinking age ProCons.org, lowering the drinking age will invite more use of illicit drugs among 18-21 year olds. It is more likely that they will use other illicit drugs. Lowering the minimum drinking age to 21 would increase the number of teens who drink and therefore the number of teens who use other drugs knowing the effects of this situation, and understanding what can happen. Young adults cloud face many more problems than just . Drinking is one step forward to many more drugs. According to drinking age ProCons.org, the minimum drinking age at 21 reduces traffic accidents and fatalities were reduced, 100 of the 102 analyses ( 98 percent) in the 2002 meta-study of the legal drinking age and traffic accidents found higher legal drinking age associated with lower accidents.
Despite the problems that would arise, many people are beginning to feel that the drinking age should be lowered from twenty-one to eighteen. Studies have been made; however, no hard evidence suggesting lowering the minimum drinking age would help have surfaced. Although there are countless studies of how alcohol has many harmful effects on teenagers, there is a great deal of negative criticism about what if the drinking age is lowered. Some would say the morally right decision is to not allow teens the chance to hurt themselves. Everyone is entitled to having his or her own opinions and beliefs. However, the overall health of the youth of our country seems a little more important than some personal belief. The drinking age should not be lowered due to the fact drunk driving, juvenile delinquency, and alcohol-related medical issues related to teens will increase.
Now let’s imagine a United States where the drinking age is lowered to age 18. What you would expect to see is that people would drink less because the temptation of drinking alcohol would be lowered. There would be a lot less alcohol related incidents because binge drinking rates decreased significantly due alcohol education and supervision. The mentality of “getting wasted” would also be gone because drinking would be treated as a normal social activity. Wow, if that really happens, drinking would be like how it is in Europe, where they have a lowered legal drinking age that actually works!