The Minimum Legal Drinking Age

No one can argue with the fact that underage drinking is a huge problem in our society today. Nonetheless, there are ways to decrease these problems. The current drinking age, twenty-one, is not beneficial to our country anymore. Lowering the age to eighteen with a license will impact our country in a positive way, by decreasing the numbers of drunk driving incidents, and alcohol poisoning due to minors drinking in secret Those who oppose lowering the drinking age say that lowering it will cause less underage age drunk driving accidents. They also say that the 18-20-year-old brain is not developed enough to safely consume alcohol.

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! CONCLUSION: Action: If you want to support a lowered legal drinking age, the least you could do is to sign a petition stating that you wish to support it.

To fix this problem, some people believe that the United States should lower the drinking age because the wait until the magical twenty- first birthday to drink is absurd and contributes to the reason why the U.S. contains a plethora of underage drinkers. Others argue that drinking at any age under twenty-one harms an individual’s health and the law must stay at its current level. Yet, several others believe that twenty-one is too low of an age for the consumption of alcohol, and thus the age ought to increase. In my opinion, the drinking age should be lowered to eighteen since society accepts that age for adulthood, and introducing teens to alcohol while they still go to high school would be beneficial for both society and their health. At age eighteen society expects citizens to act like adults and hence should be given the right to drink.

In America, the law is extremely strict with the policy of being 21 or older to have the right to drink. I feel that age is not very necessary when it comes to limitations on drinking. The drinking age should be lowered to a younger age if not lifted all together. I believe that a positive results will come from the drinking age being dropped. In this paper I am going to defend why there should not be a drinking age, because I believe that it is essential to help solve the underage drinking problems we have in our nation.

The government's intent to lowering the legal drinking age was to decrease the number of negative outcomes resulting from irresponsible alcohol use (Allen 34). By limiting the consumption of younger individuals, they thought that alcohol related traffic accidents and crimes committed by younger people could be reduced. Since the last state adopted the 21 and over law for drinking, these activities have decreased. But is it because of the new laws, or other factors? The government would like us to believe that the new laws governing underage drinking are completely dependant on the new laws, but there are other factors as well.

Proponents of lowering the legal drinking age from 21 argue that it has not stopped teen drinking, and has instead pushed more illegal underage drinking. On the other hand, however, Opponents of lowering the legal drink age argue that teens have not yet reached an age where they can handle alcohol responsibly. The legal drink age should stay at twenty-one because people tend to be more mature and responsible at 21 than at 18. 18-year-olds are typically entering a new phase of independence from their parents through college or the workforce, and are more susceptible to binge drinking, risky sexual activity, and other irresponsible behavior due to lack of maturity. Even though there are only a couple of years between these two ages I feel that a lot of growing and maturing happens in those years.

Buying and consuming alcohol legally varies from country to country. The legal drinking age here in the Virgin Islands is 18-years old. There have been countless amounts of debates on whether the drinking age in the Virgin Islands should be raised from eighteen to twenty-one. Those in favor of rising the drinking age believes there will be less alcohol related deaths and injuries from car accidents. On the other hand, I believe the drinking should not raised to twenty-one in the Virgin Islands because it deprives young adults of their rights, decreases revenue for the government and businesses, and causes a significant amount of illegal activities.

I believe the drinking age should be lowered from twenty one to eighteen. If a person is old enough to vote, then the person is mature enough to help decide who should run the country, and then he or she should have the privilege to be able to drink alcohol in moderation. The other premise is when we are eighteen we are able to lay our life down in the service of our country, but we our still not able to sit down with our friends and family and consume alcohol legally. By making drinking illegal until your twenty one only makes it more desirable, which leads to young adults’ being irresponsible about drinking. It is more common for young adults to binge drink in the United States that in most countries that allow underage drinking.

Parents are also to blame letting their kids drink and sometimes even buying it for their teens. The drinking age is twenty-one but all these teens are still getting alcohol. At this time I believe the drinking age should stay at twenty-one until there are stricter punishment for alcohol abuse. Today's laws are not what they should be to prevent teens from engaging in underage drinking. The laws are not cutting down on the number of deaths that occur because alcohol is involved or domestic disturbances.

Drinking alcohol allows many people to unwind after an extensive, stressful day at work, while others conduct it just for pleasure. Unfortunately, some of these people are young adults and according to the law it is unlawful for juveniles under 21 to obtain and drink alcohol. This matter has spawned numerous disputes on whether the consumption age should be lowered to 18. Many people deem that keeping the drinking age at 21 helps save countless lives, but others argue that changing the drinking age to 18 would depreciate underage drinking. In fact, the drinking age of 21 is a very restrictive law that does not effectively prevent underage drinking in the United States, but through education about moderation and instances of handling alcohol responsibly, the drinking age can be lowered to 18 without fear.