Reconsidering the National Minimum Age Drinking Act

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The National Minimum Age Drinking Act was signed into law on July 17, 1984. This law was carried out at the federal level and forced all states to raise the minimum drinking to 21 or face cuts in federal-aid cuts in their highway funding. I believe this law must be repelled and that the drinking age should be lowered to 18. We must decriminalize the notion of underage drinking because why must 18 through 20 year olds be treated like children but charged as adults? The United States has the highest binge drinking percentage worldwide, 5,000 people under the age of 21 die each year due to alcohol poisoning. Also, 15.8 % of underage males and 12.4 % of underage females engage in binge drinking. Binge drinking has become a culture in the United This is an example of federal government overreach into state affairs. This federal pressure has manipulated states into raising the drinking age so that they would not lose millions of dollars in highway funds. The reason that the drinking age was raised to 21 is because the government promised a 10 percent increase in highway funds to each state if they did so. 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 our own personal safety. MADD’s goal is to put “mandatory ignition interlocks 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 The legal age to consume alcohol in our nation, The United States of America, is 21 years of age; although, it was previously allowed at the age of 18, when one is accepted in adulthood. The National Minimum Drinking Age of punished every state that allowed persons under 21 years of age to purchase and publicly possess alcoholic beverages

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