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Should the Drinking Age Be Lowered to 18? Essay

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A very controversial argument amongst Americans is determining that the current legal drinking age which is 21 should be lowered to eighteen or not. Researching the following propaganda made me understand the dangers to the youth and people in America if the drinking age were to lower. Therefore i will argue with whoever disagrees with me that the drinking age should be lowered. I'd like to explain six reasons to why the drinking age should not be lowered beginning with the strongest reasons. First reason being is that alcohol effects the brain badly in many ways such as effecting a persons memory. This is not good since adolecent brains dont stop growing until their mid twenties. Recent studies included "animal studies suggest that …show more content…

Reviewing these statists one may be able to analaze and see that even drivers between 21 to 24 were high at risk. What would make a person want to lower the drinking age to 18. Young adults at eighteen are new drivers and less expierenced then the 21 + drivers and logically would produce more fatal crashes. Thirdly another serious effect alcohol has is suicide. More than "150,000 students develop an alcohol-related health problem (Hingson et al., 2002[->0]), and between 1.2 and 1.5 percent of students indicate that they tried to commit suicide within the past year due to drinking or drug use (Presley et al., 1998[->1]). People who have any sort of mental condition such as depression, manic depressive and anxiety should not be drinking alcohol at all. It's simply not good for a mentally ill person. "Alcohol has been found to lower serotonin and norepinephrine levels" Meaning that by having the serotonin levels lowered it will actually make the person even more depressed and higher risk for sucide. Alcohol is also known as the new gateway drug. Marajuana once was but now alcohol has been added into this classification list. " youth who drink drink alcohol were 50 times more then likely to use cocaine and those who smoke ciggarettes were 19x more as likely to use cocaine"(Two Dangersous Gateway Drugs, 2001). Why should America lower the drinking age if alcohol has the potential to cause people to try drugs then those who don't

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