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Drinking Age Drinking

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There has been an ongoing discussion in the United States on whether the drinking age should be lowered to eighteen like most of the world or if it should stay at twenty-one. Underage drinking has been a major questionable issue for years, yet why is it not under control? Teenagers are continuing to buy alcohol with fake identification cards, getting into bars and drinking illegally. As a recent teen, I have proof that these things are going on not only in college but in high school as well. There are a lot of factors that come together to why the drinking age should be lowered to eighteen. The most obvious reason is too many people are drinking before they are twenty-one. Liquor stores, bars, and clubs all want to make money and if they …show more content…

However, these states were later essentially bribed by Congress which used fiscal blackmail and threatened to retract funding for highway construction – to pass the National Minimum Drinking Age Act, which forced all states to change their legal drinking age to 21. In the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, it is stated that no state shall "deprive any person of life, liberty, or property." If the Constitution clearly declares that the States cannot discriminate in any way that will deny a person his civil rights, why is the government allowing states to create another second-class citizen in the millions of people aged 18 to 21 unable to drink like the rest of the adults in the country? After all, the government is ready and willing to allow its citizens to die fighting for their country, but suddenly, a beer puts these citizens too much at risk. Lowering the legal drinking age to 18 would make alcohol less of a forbidden fruit, taking away the thrill that many young people get from breaking the law, make alcohol less of a taboo for adult’s newly entering college and the workforce, and make alcohol consumption a more normalized activity done in moderation. A drinking age of 21 only forces alcohol consumption behind closed doors. Always unsupervised, done in secret and too often excessive, this style of drinking among minors has no doubt been responsible for the alarming rise in rates of dangerous binge drinking at colleges. In 2006,

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