Drinking Age: A Case Study

The drinking age was moved from 18 to 21 for a reason. The higher drinking age of 21 has saved many lives, helped reduce the amount of underage drinking, and therefore should not be lowered. Many studies from a large variety of sources have proven higher drinking ages have a positive effect on society.

For many years, the debate about the legal drinking age has been prolonged. In the mid-1930s, under the 21st Amendment, the federal law to drink was age 21; however, states were given the option to set their own legal drinking age. During the 1970s, 30 states had a legal drinking age ranging from 18 to 20. Ten years in, the death toll rose from 10 to 40 percent in states that had lowered their drinking age (Barnhill, 2014). After many observations of traffic accidents involving drunk teenagers, the organization Mothers Against Drunk Driving or (MADD) acted by educating the public of the dangers of drunk driving, and to speak for stronger drunk driving laws. This received so much publicity that President Reagan signed a bill into

Teenagers are irresponsible. Young adults can not handle real life situations. New generations do not know how to use things in moderation. These are all stereotypes of America’s youth, yet they all seem to refer to teachable things. They are all things that need to be learned. Most of the time, the young are looked down on for messing up in life, yet the reality is that anyone can screw up, it just is more likely to happen to someone who has less experience as opposed to someone who has more. The more time a person is given to learn about something, and the more guidance they have, the more experienced and reliable they will become. This applies to many things, but one specific example is alcohol. Typically teens are seen as too irresponsible to have access to substances containing alcohol, but if they were to legally have it in their lives, it may educate them sooner as to how to use it properly and in moderation. In the United States of America, the drinking age should be lowered to eighteen years old.

In 1980 after Candy Lightner, a mother of a thirteen-year-old girl was killed by a hit-and-run drunk driver, she was galvanized by the tragedy and founded of the organization MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Driving). MADD lobbied for the law after many deaths of children in result of drunk driving, and activist who protested against the organization was accused of promoting drunk driving. Since then, they are still to this day fighting to keep the uniform minimum drinking age at 21.

Groups such as the Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) and others were able to make strong arguments that appealed to the emotions of many US citizens. The founder of MADD was a woman named Candy Lightner whose thirteen year old daughter was killed in a hit-and-run by a man with two previous convictions and was only sentenced with 2 years in minimum security prison after the hit-and-run (Gale). After the creation of MADD in 1980, several people who were parents and relatives of those killed in drunk driving accidents opened their own chapters. These people spoke to the hearts and minds of others using their real-life experiences to depict exactly how damaging the drunk driving epidemic really was. Finally, in 1988, all fifty states switched back to a minimum legal drinking age of twenty-one where it has stayed ever

The background of the case is a conflict between the state and the federal government over the creation of a minimum drinking age. The conflict was pursued when a car with four friends, all of age nineteen on a summer evening in 1984, crosses the state line into South Dakota where they could legally purchase beer. During the year of 1984, lawmakers in Washington D.C. we’re fortifying the National Minimum Drink Age Amendment which proclaimed that states who refuse to raise their drinking age to 21 would be deducted from 5% federal highway funds by the Secretary of Transportation. South Dakota challenged the rule because it is a state that legalized persons 19 years of age to procure alcohol. The law in question was whether Congress was in violation of the Twenty-first Amendment which granted states the elite power to regulate alcohol.

The Mothers Against Drunk Driving called on congress along with Senator Frank Lautenberg, House Public Works and Transportation Committee Chairman Kim Howard, Congressman Michael Barnes, then-Transportation Secretary Elizabeth Dole, Illinois Secretary of State Jim Edgar and representatives of the health and safety community to erase the blood borders between the states with differing ages by setting the nation’s minimum legal drinking age to 21. Therefore, “In 1984, Congress passed the National Minimum Drinking Age Act, NMDAA” (“Minimum Drinking Age” 12-13). The creation of this act raised the drinking age to what it is in United States of America today, 21 years old. Not only has this gotten rid of the patchwork of different states with differing

People acknowledge that the United States should lower the legal drinking age or keep it at twenty-one years of age. The cancellation of the alcohol Prohibition by the 21st Amendment on December 5, 1933. Which allowed the states to make their own alcohol consumption laws. All of the states in the US have set there legal drinking age to twenty-one but there are some exceptions in states for consumption of alcohol at home, under adult supervision, and other reason falling in that category.I feel that the US should keep the drinking age at twenty-one years of age.

Does drinking alcohol make you an adult? In the article called,¨Drinking age laws affect teen accident rate¨ on cdc.gov some provinces in Canada were recommended to change the drinking age to 21 due to many teen drunk driving accidents. If only the provinces of Canada would change the official drinking age to 21 then this change can save teen lives from devastating car accidents. This big change can help other countries from around the world decide the official age to drink alcohol.

When talking about the college population and the issue of drinking and driving, studies have shown that for every underage drinker theirs a 50/50 percent change he or she might know someone who has or will be in a car accident involving a DUI. This alarming ratio was the basis for a study completed by Engs and Hanson (1986) researchers from the University of Chicago, who compared the college population of states with a drinking age of 21 with states with a lower drinking age, the experiment was possible since at the time not all states have accepted the Uniform Drinking Age Act. The study involved a survey of about 4,000 student with a 17 question asking about the negative consequences from drinking they had experienced within the last

The Drinking age debate for young adults have been very controversial since the 1970s to the present days.The Drinking age have been very controversial between the age of 18 and the age of 21. For many years, Most people wanted the drinking age to be 18 because they believe since u are an adult u are mature. On the other hand the other side believes that keeping the legal drinking age at 21 causes less accidents and deaths. They have been many studies on why the drinking age shouldnt be 18. There are many benefits and risks of having the drinking age lowered from 21 to 18.

The United States is one of the four countries in the world with a legal drinking age as high, or higher, than 21 years of age. Reportedly the reason for this is because it helps to lower th

For many of the generations living today, the legal drinking age has always been set at twenty-one. In the 1980’s, it rose from eighteen to twenty-one in an attempt to reduce the amount of underage drunk driving accidents. The number of traffic fatalities has significantly declined over the past few decades. However, many would argue that the law has spawned many new problems as well, such as an increase in alcohol poisoning deaths and binge drinking.

The government have many different strategies in place to try to prevent young people from participating in risk taking behaviour. It has been found that the amount of 16-24 year olds binge drinking is at its lowest since 1998 (Office of National Statistics, 2010). This evidence is supported by research which found that the amount of underage drinking amongst children aged 11-15 has also decreased from 27% in 1996 to 13% in 2010 (NHS Information Centre, 2010). Although both statistics are not specific for the age this dissertation focuses on, it covers the age range in both findings, which highlights that alcohol intake has reduced. Although the alcohol intake of under 18s has decreased, the government still propose to reduce it further in

When teen-agers turn 18, they are told that they are adults and are sent into the world. They go to college, get a job, marry or join the military. They do grown-up things like vote, pay taxes and become parents. But they can't go to the pub for a beer because when it comes to liquor, they are still just kids. Where's the fairness in the 21-and-older drinking law?