Should the Drinking Age Be Lowered?

Chris Skinner finished his shift at a local pizza shop, where he worked, at 9:30. It was time to party hard he thought to himself as he was clocking out. He met up with some of his friends at Josh Dymtruk’s house in Flamborough. When he arrived his friends were playing a drinking game with cards in the back yard called kings. Dymtruk told everyone to leave by midnight. Skinner was “sloshed” according to his friend Kyle Barron, but even so Kyle invited Skinner over to his house where the party could continue with kyle’s parents. (Peters)

When they arrived at Kyles house his parents joined them in consuming more hard liquor they had brought from the party beforehand. Doug and Wendy, kyle’s parents, continued to drink and played video games while Kyle, Skinner, and the rest of their friends went to the basement to smoke some marijuana. After the smoking has ceased, they went to the basement to challenge Kyle’s brother to a game of beer pong, a different drinking game. Around 3am after drinking, a 26-ounce bottle of rye, two or three beers, marijuana and chugged a pint-sized glass of type of rum, Skinner passed out and never woke up.(Peters)

The consumption of alcohol has played a huge role in socialization for decades. Alcohol is consumed at parties, bars, sports games, birthdays, holidays and most other social event. Most of these events you're not required to be 21. In fact in most of them you have to be 18. So why not lower the drinking age to 18? It would diminish the amount of people drinking in unsafe places in fear of the law. It would reduce the amount of people that die neglecting medical attention in fear of a police investigation. It would allow people to drink in supervised environments such as b...

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...d and in most cases it goes without punishment.

One of the main reasons that the drinking age is 21 is because of this idea that if you stop the sale and consumption of alcohol to teens, there would be less teen drinking and driving incidents. Well there is one problem with this. Well before the drinking age was changed the amount of drinking and driving accidents were already decreasing, When the law was put into effect it only decreased the amount of people drinking and driving a tiny bit. Politicians and the organization mothers against drunk driving put all these statistics in peoples faces right after the law came out, stating that this law was saving children when it simply wasn't the case. They forgot to include that a few years before the law was enacted the number of teens drinking and driving was decreasing and that the law only helped a miniscule amount.