Essay On Keeping The Drinking Age

What is your opinion on the legal drinking age in the United States? Should it be raised or lowered? I think the drinking age should be raised from 21 to 25.It should be raised because the human brain isn't fully developed ,or matured, until age 25, it would reduce youth alcohol problems, and would reduce teen accidents and deaths.

Although many states are trying to get the drinking age lowered, there are many groups and national statistics that are keeping the drinking set at 21.

There are statistics that alcohol consumption has lowered since 1984. Some attribute this to the fact that drinking age is set at 21, but this is not absolutely the reason because even where it is set at 18 people make their own choices of whether to drink or not. It is also evident that setting the drinking age at 21 against 18 does not eliminate teenage drinking problems; instead it just keeps them on hold until the teens get to 21 years of age. In some cases keeping the minimum drinking age at 21 encourages teens to drink more. Hence drinking age should be set at the age of 18. Here are some of the reasons why.

Unfortunately, more than a third of these drinkers are unable to remember what happened the night of a big drinking session. The youth particularly, are vulnerable to the effects of heavy drinking. Harms include an increased risk of traffic accidents, injuries from violence, death, health problems, and some studies suggest suicide. If the legal drinking age is raised to 21 then at least one will have finished the major part of their education. Therefore if people start drinking later in life, they may be more likely to drink in moderation and not get addicted at an early

In the United States, a citizen is considered an “adult” at the age of 18, and with that new title comes many responsibilities, such as the right to vote and to join the army. However, the legal drinking age in America is twenty-one. This issue has been a major controversy for some time now that faces both national and state governments. Should the drinking age be lowered to the age when legally a person becomes an adult and assumes all other adult responsibilities, or should it remain at a higher age to allow people to grow more mature and, hopefully, make more responsible decisions?

In 1971, the United States ratified the 26th amendment which lowered the voting age in America to 18. As a result of that change many people believed the drinking age should be lowered as well, and because the drinking age was the power of the states, many states country wide began to lower the drinking age to 18, 19 and 20 years old. By 1983, 28 of the 50 states had lowered their legal drinking age but on July 17th, 1984 President Ronald Reagan passed the Minimum Drinking Age Act, increasing the legal drinking age to 21. As a result, States were given an ultimatum which was to either raise their legal drinking age to 21 or face a 10 percent cut to their federal highway funding, and all states eventually raised their drinking age. Ever since

Without a doubt, the United States has been facing serious national problems with underage drinking. Depending on personal ideologies, some people might not agree that the current minimum drinking age of twenty-one is based on scientific facts rather then ideology of prohibitionism. For example, since 1975 over seventeen thousand lives have been saved since the minimum legal drinking age (MLDA) was changed to age twenty-one (Balkin 167). This shows that even over a short amount of time, a higher MLDA helps decrease the risk of teen suicides, accidents and overdose deaths. However, this widely debated topic has inevitably brought attention to the plethora of supporting and opposing viewpoints. The minimum legal drinking age of twenty-one

However, lowering the drinking age can have negative effects on a young person's brain: “Mounting research suggests that alcohol causes more damage to the developing brains of teenagers than was previously thought, injuring them significantly

The second reason the drinking age shouldn’t be lowered is because of alcohol associated violent behavior. Alcohol has been reported to be involved in “36 percent of homicides, 12 percent of male suicides, and 8 percent of female suicides involving people under 21—a total of about 1,500 homicides and 300 suicides in 2000”(Bonnie, O’Connell). These statistics alone show that alcohol is aiding in the deaths of many individuals. Because of the exaggerated effects that alcohol has on an eighteen year old, destructive behavior is also exaggerated. Most arguments and fights occur when intoxicated. According to the national Institutes of Health, “Individuals under the age of 21 commit 45 percent of rapes, 44 percent of robberies, and 37 percent

The drinking age staying at the age of 21 is controversial because people are unclear of the health risks of drinking before the brain is fully developed. The strongest counter-argument is without teaching adolescents the impact and responsibility of consuming alcohol, binge drinking can occur, which is suggesting that binge drinking overall creates health risks at any age.

“In 2012, nearly ¾ of students (72%) have consumed alcohol (more than just a few sips) by the end of high school, and more than ⅓ (37%) have done so by the 8th grade.” (dosomething.org) People under the age of 21 are already illegally drinking. Adults don't even listen to the rules about drinking so why should teens.. The legal drinking age should be lowered because by the age of 18 you are legally an adult, therefore the legal drinking age should be lowered from 21 to 18.

Whenever there is a social issue, the first thing that people want to do is find a way to fix the problem. There are many causes and effects of underage drinking along with a few solutions. None of the solutions are perfect. However, there are small steps that can be made to minimize the amount of alcohol consumption in adolescents.

The drinking age being set to eighteen is medically irresponsible and endangers the lives of many. Keeping the drinking age at twenty-one saves about 800 lives per year (Ogilvie, 2011). The lives are saved because there is less young people that are too young and immature to handle alcohol responsibly drinking and driving . The younger a person is, the more they combine binge drinking with driving and believe they are fine to drive home and end up crashing and not only killing themselves but others with them. Drinking before the age of twenty-one may interfere with the maturing and development of a person's frontal lobes, which are responsible for self-regulation, judgement, reasoning, problem-solving, and impulse control (Health and Services,

I know that I will get plenty of slack for this but here it goes. I would support reducing the legal drinking age from 21 to 18 year old. Someone who turns eighteen in the county does have the right to vote, join the military, get married, sign contracts, and it some states gamble legally. Making someone wait until they another three years for it to be legal to drink doesn’t really seem to make that much a difference. Not to mention teenagers typically start drinking much younger than that. The argument can be presented that someone is not mature enough at eighteen to drink. There is really not much of a difference at twenty-one either for most people.

In the last few years, new studies have shown that the age that people reach physical maturity is 25 and it is definitely not 18 and it is also not 21. The human brain is not fully developed until the age of 25 and people who say it should be lowered don't understand the science behind it. Drinking underage causes many problems in the human body especially when the brain isn't fully developed yet, due to this the drinking age should be raised to 25.