Drinking Age Should Be Lowered

Most people would concur that alcohol should not be given to teenagers. Despite the fact that we concede to this essential truth, underage drinking is still a noteworthy issue in our nation. Since adolescents need development and information with regards to liquor, they put themselves, as well as others in incredible danger when they decide to consume. Regardless of the risk, there are individuals out there who believe that the drinking age should be lowered.

In recent discussions of the drinking age limit, people have always said that the drinking age limit should be lowered. Some may argue that alcohol is not bad and that it can actually be beneficially. Many people would want the drinking age limit to be lowered so that it is legal for young adults to drink. If the drinking age limit were to be lowered there would be a drastic difference in society. In my perspective I will argue that the drinking age limit should not be lowered.

An abundance of people start to drink during young adulthood. In the last 30 days roughly 39% of high schoolers drank some amount of alcohol (CDC). Alcohol has been around for tens of thousands of years and it’s always been an underlying issue. My question is, “Why should we lower the legal drinking age”? Current proposals to lower the minimum legal drinking age to 18 would have some benefits like increasing revenue for bars and liquor stores. However the risks surpass the benefits. Many people think that if you’re 18 you’re portrayed as an adult, you’re old enough to serve your country, vote, and make your own decisions. In some cases this could be true, but lowering the drinking age would be way too risky for themselves and others. There was a telephone survey done in Princeton, NJ on July 12-15, 2007 that questioned 1,001 people 18 and older if the minimum legal drinking age should be lowered to 18. The results were 77% of the people said that they would disagree with this proposal, and only 22% said that they would support it (Carroll). The minimum drinking age of 21 should not be lowered to 18, because 18 year olds tend to drink in a different way than more matured adults drink. They’re irresponsible when it comes to drinking because they drink to get drunk. As a result, there are more DUI arrests, the motor vehicle accident rate increases, and binge drinking raises health concerns.

Everyone knows that it is illegal to consume alcohol under the age of 21. Why is 21 the "magical" age that makes a person intelligent and mature enough to consume alcohol? Sure, some adults abuse alcohol and some teenagers would be perfectly able to drink responsibly, but why not 18 or 35 or 40? This seemingly random number, 21, is associated with adulthood, as if the day a person turns 21 they know everything and are mature. The drinking age should be lowered to where one can learn to drink responsibly.

Alcohol is usually sought after within the adolescent community and has been an issue among young people. On July 17th 1984, congress passed The National Minimum Drinking Age Act of 1984 which enforces the legal drinking age and purchasing of alcohol in the United States to be twenty-one. Since then, the debated idea of whether or not the drinking age should be lowered to eighteen has been an ongoing topic for decades. Alcoholism affects many people in the United States but promoting it at such young age would not be such a great idea for the youths in today’s society.The drinking age should not be lowered due to the fact that it poses many dangers in the lives of teenaegers especially brain damages, underage drinking has declined since 1984, enforcing alcohol among teenagers may cause an increase in drunk driving and deaths and most importantly, teenagers who start drinking at an early age are more than three times more likely to develop alcohol dependency later on in life than those who started at the legal age of 21 or later.

According to Andrew Herman, “Each year, 14,000 die from drinking too much. 600,000 are victims of alcohol related physical assault and 17,000 are a result of drunken driving deaths, many being innocent bystanders” (470). These massive numbers bring about an important realization: alcohol is a huge issue in America today. Although the problem is evident in Americans of all ages, the biggest issue is present in young adults and teens. In fact, teens begin to feel the effects of alcohol twice as fast as adults and are more likely to participate in “binge-drinking” (Sullivan 473). The problem is evident, but the solution may be simple. Although opponents argue lowering the drinking age could make alcohol available to some teens not

During World War two, there was limited amount of troops due to the age requirements while drafting. Because of this, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, president of the United States at the time, approved of lowering the drafting age from twenty one to eighteen years old. This strengthened the United States’ troops, but at the same time, it formed a gateway for more issues to be discussed in the future. At the time of World War two, not only was the drafting age twenty one, but you had to be twenty one to vote, and also, setting the drinking age was a state power. Because of this soldiers of ages eighteen to twenty began to raise the issue of being able to hold a weapon

Approximately 2 out of every 3 high school students have drank to the point of getting intoxicated (binge drink), in more than one occasion (Centers for Disease and Control Prevention [CDC], n.d.). Binge drinking has become increasingly common for youth under the minimum legal drinking age, making it increasingly dangerous because of the lack of supervision that young adults have that can consequently, lead to death because of fear of the law (Bonnie & O’Connell, 2004) The drinking age should be lowered to 18 because it is a reasonable societal age limit that can be supervised and used by most of the world and is seen as the age of majority in the United States (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration [NHTSA], 2001).

However, there are those who remain persistent in their requests to drop the drinking age to a slightly lower option. Opposition to the legal drinking age of twenty-one has shown to have some support from mostly younger groups of people, without much validation as to why a lowered drinking age would be beneficial to our country as a whole. Yet, there are still some interesting arguments for those in favor of dropping the age at which it is legal to drink to eighteen.

Getting to 18 years of age is an important milestone for a US resident because it is the legal age for independence, allowing the individual to make his or her decisions regarding tobacco smoking, driving and even joining the armed forces while being treated as an adult by the justice system. While this statement is essentially accurate, it is untrue concerning the ability to purchase and drink alcohol. This is because the US law has set the threshold for alcohol purchase and consumption at 21 years of age (Mistral 1980). The question then remains; if an individual is considered an adult at 18 years of age, is it not right to allow them to purchase and consume alcohol at the same age? Answering this question has been a matter of polarizing debate, with those in support of and opposition to lowering the drinking age presenting valid arguments. The present paper discusses the same argument with a subjective bias towards supporting calls for the US legislators to lower the legal drinking age to 18 years.

The minimum age limit has been a topic of debate for years even though the choice is simple. Did you know that most parents living in Kansas nowadays grew up in a time in Kansas when they could drink a little alcohol when they were only 18 years old? Many people believe that if we allow drinking at younger ages such as 18 or 19 it would get rid of the “forbidden fruit” effect on alcohol. This is a way of thinking for fools about the problem of legal age of alcohol consumption. The reasons why we shouldn’t change the drinking age to 18 are it damages brain development and it causes more social problems. This problem came about soon after the Prohibition on alcohol was repealed in 1933, it was left up to the state to decide what

The United States’ minimum legal drinking age (MLDA) of twenty one is almost a perfect example of a policy with unrealistic expectations and serious unintended consequences. The current policy that the United States has in effect criminalizes youth who consume alcohol at less than twenty one years of age. Young adults are going to drink under twenty one, so why shouldn’t the United States lower the MLDA to eighteen? Following Prohibition in 1933, many states made their MLDA twenty one. During the 1960’s and 1970’s, many states lowered it to eighteen to match the drafting age (Alcohol Policy MD). President Reagan passed The National Minimum Drinking Age Act of 1984 which required all states to raise their minimum purchase and public

Isn’t it funny how people who are considered “adults” cannot even make their own decisions? The drinking age on alcohol is a controversial social and cultural issue in today’s society; all fifty states have a minimum drinking age of 21. The legal drinking age should be lowered from the age of 21 to 18 allowing young adults to be granted the right to drink in restaurants, bars, at social events, in the comfort of their own home, and so on. If anything, lowering the legal drinking age would have a positive impact on the United Sates economy, because revenue will rise for the owners of these establishments, and the tax revenue that the government collects will increase as well. During the 1850s there was a state prohibition of alcohol, and in the 1920s the government attempted to outlaw the use and distribution of alcohol for the nation as a whole. Both of these laws were repealed due to the fact that they were “unenforceable”, contributed to organized crime, and the corruption of law enforcement. When we, as a nation, restrict and prohibit the use of alcohol to people we consider adults, we are only repeating history. Prohibition did not nor will ever work; the proof of this is the increasing amount of underage drinking. The minimum legal drinking age in the United States should be lowered from 21 to 18 because as adults people should be able to make their own responsible decisions about alcohol consumption, it will not contribute more to traffic accidents, and it will

Ever since its creation in ancient times, alcohol has been used for many reasons and purposes. Since then, controversies have risen on the topic of alcohol consumption and production. Among these controversies is that of the legal drinking age. While that age is 21 years, the legal age for smoking and for holding political posts is 18 years, and the legal age for consent for sex is 16 years – two of which are activities that are equally, if not more, detrimental to one’s health than consuming alcohol. Because the legal ages for the latter three activities and drinking are discrepant, and because many people who are under the age of 21 years drink despite its illegality, the legal age should be lowered accordingly.

The legal drinking age should not be a common controversial topic of debate that people argue about time and time again. It is so obvious to see that when the law was passed to make the legal drinking age twenty-one years, it was the best decision for our nation. Alcohol is the main drug problem for the youth in the United States and as well as the world. This problem is carried over when teenagers get behind the wheel while intoxicated. Although, from studies carried out, young drivers are less likely to drink and drive however the severity of accidents caused by drunken teens outweighs the accidents caused by adults. The legal drinking age should remain as is and there are countless reasons to back this claim.