Essay On Lowering The Drinking Age

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.

It’s no doubt that alcohol has a major sway on today’s society across the board both culturally and globally. When we take a look into past history, we can see how alcohol has been the fundamental measures to religious, professional, and social concerns. It seems that no matter how far our history books go back, the United States has had a question about the consumption of alcoholic beverages. Through the years of Prohibition halting the sale, shipping, and ingestion of alcohol and the constitutional acts delegating who is accurately fit to drink. Today’s controversy is a lot less infringing on personal rights. It’s regarding whether the legal drinking age should be lowered from twenty-one to eighteen. This has been a huge controversy geared exclusively towards college students due to the fact that alcohol consumption at universities is the definitive part of campus life even though the greater part of students are not legally permitted to drink. It is apparent that through the regularity and risks of binge drinking across universities and the high percentage of DUI and alcohol related fatal crashes, that something needs to shift in this country. Lowering the drinking age to eighteen would be an expedient and positive step in reducing binge drinking, nurturing the safe practice of drinking alcohol, and permitting those students of legal drinking age the chance to fully and sensibly make mature adult choices.

This discussion has been going on for long on many forums without a decisive conclusion or agreement. This is mainly because both the arguments for lowering the age to 18 years and not lowering have some substantial facts to support them. The people who are against lowering the drinking age come up with a number of arguments which are explained below.

Concluding that someone who can give their life up for their country and marry someone ,but not even drink a glass of champagne at their own wedding because according to the law they are not “mature” enough seems to be contradictory. Lowering the drinking age would not only present an increase economically from more alcohol purchased ,but it would also diminish the outcome of punishment for a legal

Underage drinking is a very eminent problem for Americans today. Some may not know that the human brain continues to develop until the age of twenty-five. Underage drinking can weaken neurological development, which could cause minors to make bad decisions, have memory loss, slower thought processes, and even acquire irreversible brain damage. Drinking when your body and mind are not fully developed can leave damaging effects on a person’s social abilities, neurological abilities, and overall health.

Risking one’s life to serve this country, having the responsibility to vote for this country’s next leader, having the freedom to gamble one’s savings away: these liberties become reality for every young adult at the age of eighteen. Why, then, is it that the government wants to hold on to the ability for eighteen year olds to drink alcohol? Since 1984 the U.S. law has held the drinking age at twenty-one years of age. Some people hold that the drinking age should remain the same, while others fight for change. The U.S. government should lower the age for drinking to 18 because all other rights are given to Americans by then, it would cause less underage drinking, and it would be economically beneficial.

One of the largest questions still up for debate is whether to lower the drinking age from 21 to 18. We know that this issue is very mundane to you if you’re from the 70’s and 80’s. We can also recall learning about prohibition in the 1920s. Banning alcohol wasn’t the answer then and it isn’t the answer now. It is time America has lowered the drinking age. The push for this started by the founder of Choose Responsibility, a nonprofit organization that focuses on the increasing awareness of the harms associated with alcohol use among young adults. The United States is one of the only western nations left in which the drinking age is over 18. In most European cultures, drinking is perceived as a social activity. Therefore youths drink as

“Before the minimum drinking age law, 16- to 20-years olds were the most common drunken drivers” (Griggs). Teens should be worried about going to college rather than going to parties and getting drunk and not going to class the next day because they have a hangover. Lowering the drinking age down by three years is three more years they could be learning how to become responsible. The drinking age should be kept at age 21 because it would create a safer environment for everyone and everyone around them.

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.

The most common argument includes the fact that 18 year olds or those close to or slightly above this age use alcohol anyway despite restrictions. They asserts that if allowed to drink, young people, as a result, be less secretive, less rebellious and more responsible. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention studies disclosed that a considerable number of underage people use alcohol and some do it excessively. In that regard, proponents for lowering drinking age believe that by lowering the minimal legal drinking age to 18 years, most of these young adults would not need to secretively drink and binge while drinking. By allowing them to drink safely in bars and restaurants, their behaviors and the amount they consume would be easily regulated (The Legal Drinking Age,

Everyone hears about tragedies because of drunk drivers or the stories of the people who grew up with alcoholic parents or the choices people who drink extensively make that hurt and affect so many others. My mother grew up with two alcoholic parents. They could be mean drunks. There are the different kinds of drunks everyone knows: mean drunks, funny drunks, loud drunks, clumsy drunks, emotional drunks, etc. What a lot of people don't realize is that, all drunks and alcoholics have a few things in common. They all forget it in the morning, always have a drink, always deny their problem, frequently can't/don't accept help unless they want to change. There is no talking to an alcoholic.

The push to engage people in the debate concerning the lowering of the drinking age has even been noted recently on such cable news networks as CNN. CNN reported that "the presidents of about 100 colleges and universities say current alcohol laws may actually encourage binge drinking on campuses" ("Should U.S. Lower Drinking Age?"). It seems the only opposition, according to CNN, comes from

Lowering the drinking age will increase peer pressure to consume more alcohol and lead to binge drinking. College provides the perfect environment for peer pressure. Often times having fun at college means alcohol will be involved. It can be hard not to fall in that trap of wanting to fit in when your roommate and buddies are drinking. “Peer effects on binge drinking are robust, regardless of gender and prior drinking” (Eisenberg n.p.). Peer pressure can not only affect 18 year old college students but younger students as well. Peer pressure may lead to the selling of alcohol to students younger than 18. 18 year olds could very easily buy alcohol for a younger student (Alcantara 468). Younger peers would have more success with a fake idea for 18 than 21(Alcantara 468). The number of young binge drinkers would increase because of easier access. “Alcohol is one for the most used and abused drugs among teenagers in the U.S.”(Alcantara).

The proportion of 18-24-year-old college students who reported driving under the influence of alcohol increased from 26.5% to 31.4%, an increase from 2.3 million students to 2.8 million. During both years more than 500,000 students were unintentionally injured because of drinking and more than 600,000 were hit/assaulted by another drinking student. Freshmen who enroll in colleges where many students engage in binge drinking are quick to adopt the binge-drinking lifestyle. Excessive drinking among college students is a public health problem that is larger than just the colleges and universities. It is a problem for our entire state. Drinking age should be lowered from 21 to 18, to help confront what they describe as a hidden crisis in binge drinking among students. But they offer no convincing evidence that lowering the drinking age would reduce excessive alcohol use by college students.

As though the youth don't already make inferior choices without alcohol, with it, the results can be fatalistic. “…about 1155 persons under 21 die every year in car crashes involving underage drinking.” (Consumer Information, 2013). This is proof of how alcohol is poison to the youth, dominating their behavior, and becoming the cause to such young deaths. With the help of alcohol, teens awareness is being altered. “In 2008, almost 40,000 youth ages 15-20 were admitted to hospitals due to alcohol problems.” (Consumer Information, 2013). The numbers review the risks put in place by teens consuming alcohol. If the damage done is not lethal, it very well can still be life changing. From broken bones, to possibly killing or injuring someone else, everything can change in one