Lowering The Drinking Age Essay

There always has been controversy as to should the united states lower the drinking age to 18. Eighteen year olds should have the right to drink. By lowering the drinking age to eighteen it will give people supervision, teach responsibilities, and eighteen years olds are already considered adults; however, it may cause binge drinking, it will lead to more deaths, and drinking damages brains cells and especially the body itself.

The national minimum drinking age in The United States is stated to be anyone under the age of 21 years can not consume or purchase any alcoholic beverage; this law was passed on July 17,1984 by President Reagan. Nearly 88,000 people die from alcohol-related causes annually making it the third leading preventable cause of death in the United States. Many People would agree that alcohol should not be present to children under the age of 21 years. There has been many debates on whether or not the drinking age should be lowered to 18 years of age. “Between 1970 and 1976, 29 states lowered their age for drinking alcohol. The results were catastrophic. Highway deaths among teenagers and young adults skyrocketed. Immediately, states began raising the minimum

Every year, thousands of minors die from the use of alcohol. Many young adults abuse the drinking age policy. It is put in effect for substantial reasons, which contribute in making the safest environment for all. Drinking underage is not only illegal, but also damages one’s health tremendously. Furthermore, drinking in large amounts is extremely dangerous and can cause detrimental things to occur. There have been numerous attempts to create a law to lower the drinking age, but none have gone through. In contrast to what some people may say, the drinking age should not be lowered because it would decrease maturity, promote poor behavior, and damage reputations.

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.

It has been a rising issue within the past century to have the drinking age set at 21, but many people are more in favor of having the age set at 18. For instance, “’Raising the drinking age to 21 was passed with the very best of intentions, but it’s had the very worst of outcomes,’ stated by David J. Hanson, an alcohol policy expert” (Johnson). Many people believe that having the drinking age set at 21 was a smart idea, but it has caused many more deaths and injuries over the years. Most of these fatalities are cause from people who are underage and choose to consume alcohol. Again, “Libertarian groups and some conservative economic foundations, seeing the age limits as having been extorted by Washington, have long championed lowering the drinking age” (Johnson). These groups see that keeping the drinking age set at 21 is dangerous as it causes more problems to the Untied States. If the drinking age was lowered, or set at 18, there would not be such unforgiving outcomes, like deaths and lifelong injuries, which are usually caused from people who are under the age of 21 drinking alcohol. Although there are numerous groups that are fighting to keep the age

There has been a debate on lowering the drinking age from twenty-one to eighteen. There are many reasons why this policy should not be passed. At the age of eighteen in the United States one is considered as an adult to make there own decisions, vote, and are allowed to buy Tabaco. Drinking is not one of them. Studies have shown that there are scientific reasons this should not happen. First drinking can be very harmful to the body, causing severe symptoms. Second the drinking and driving rate would increase. Finally, eighteen year olds are not as mature as twenty-one year olds. They are not as fully developed as twenty-one year olds. All of these are factors that contribute to why the drinking age should not be lowered.

It’s no doubt that alcohol has a major sway on today’s society across the board both culturally and globally. When we take a look into past history, we can see how alcohol has been the fundamental measures to religious, professional, and social concerns. It seems that no matter how far our history books go back, the United States has had a question about the consumption of alcoholic beverages. Through the years of Prohibition halting the sale, shipping, and ingestion of alcohol and the constitutional acts delegating who is accurately fit to drink. Today’s controversy is a lot less infringing on personal rights. It’s regarding whether the legal drinking age should be lowered from twenty-one to eighteen. This has been a huge controversy geared exclusively towards college students due to the fact that alcohol consumption at universities is the definitive part of campus life even though the greater part of students are not legally permitted to drink. It is apparent that through the regularity and risks of binge drinking across universities and the high percentage of DUI and alcohol related fatal crashes, that something needs to shift in this country. Lowering the drinking age to eighteen would be an expedient and positive step in reducing binge drinking, nurturing the safe practice of drinking alcohol, and permitting those students of legal drinking age the chance to fully and sensibly make mature adult choices.

My chose to do the policy where we should lower the drinking age from twenty one to eighteen. There are many arguments where you could lower the drinking age. Some say that lowering the drinking age would stop underage drinking and control binge drinking. I think it would stop those things to like lowering the drinking age would cut out a lot of underage drinking because most kids don’t start liking alcohol until there about eighteen anyways.

According to Drew K. Saylor, he writes that studies from a meta-analytic review showed that "Raising the minimum legal drinking age (MLDA) is associated with a 16% median decrease in alcohol-related crash outcomes while lowering the MLDA result in a 10% median increase in such crash outcomes" (332). The essence of this argument is that having the law of the drinking age to be 21 has a positive effect in the country because there is a decrease in car crashes. This is why the author Drew K. Saylor also agrees when he writes "A solution to this problem is not a simple as lowering the drinking age and asking young people to choose responsibility" (332). Saylor's point is to make the people understand that lowering the drinking age won't fix much because accidents will still happen, but with more frequency. Since in the past, the argument was deciding whether to raise or no to raise the drinking age to be 21 because of the danger youths had to live through if something happened to them. Drew K. Saylor argues that the drinking age has led to create a change in the people who are 18-20 years old because college students now a days tend to consume more alcohol than any others. When this happens among college students, it’s called binge drinking. According to Drew K. Saylor, a professor from the University of Virginia with a BA degree, he states that “Binge drinking is the consumption of an excessive amount of alcohol in a short period of time”

When it comes to an alcohol safety policy, the United States has never attracted more research and public attention than the minimum legal drinking age (MLDA). In the U.S., the legal drinking age is one of the highest worldwide. The MLDA of 21 is to control traffic fatalities, protect young teens from killing themselves while driving under the influence, and prevent damage medically to a developing brain of a young adult. Many Americans believe that the drinking age of 21 has not stopped teen binge drinking events in uncontrolled environments; however, studies have shown that teens have not yet reached an age where they can handle alcohol responsibly, thus the drinking age should remain at 21.

The issue of underage drinking has become a major problem, especially on college campuses. But, underage drinking is not purely the root of all accidents related to alcohol. The real problem lies within the unsafe underage drinking habits amongst youth. There are ways that these alcohol-related accidents can be avoided. Several organizations have been created that are targeting a change in the legal drinking age laws. One key way to lower the risk of unsafe drinking is to lower the minimum legal drinking age from twenty-one to eighteen.

On July 1, 1971 the 26th amendment was passed which lowered the minimum age to vote from twenty one to eighteen years old. Shortly after the amendment was passed twenty nine states across America started lowering the drinking age from 21 to either 18,19, or 20 years old. This new freedom for young adults only lasted for a brief time by 1984 the Uniform Drinking Age Act was passed. The Uniform Drinking Age Act forced states to change the drinking age back to twenty one years old; by reducing the federal transportation funding, for each state that did not have a minimum drinking age of21. This act has caused controversy for years, there even is group of 136 college presidents called Amethyst Initiative that support a lower minimum legal

I. Introduction: Starting in 1970 21 states reduced the minimum drinking age to 18. Another 8 reduced it to 19 or 20. However, these states noticed increases in alcohol-related fatalities among teenagers and young adults. As a result, of the 29 states that had lowered their drinking age, 24 raised the age again between 1976 and 1984. By 1984, only three states allowed 18-year-olds to drink all types of alcoholic liquor. The enactment of the National Minimum Drinking Age Act of 1984 prompted states to raise their legal age for purchase or public possession of alcohol to 21 or risk losing millions in federal highway funds. The states who raised it were given highway funding by the

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

Was it a good decision to choose 21 as the legal drinking age? Research shows that “alcohol consumption, heavy drinking, and daily alcohol use has declined among young adults age 18-20 since the 1980s” (Wechsler). Along with the decline in consumption, the percentage of alcohol-related traffic fatalities has also dramatically declined from the 1980s until 1997 when it leveled off. (Wechsler).