The Legal Drinking Age Should Be Abolished

In 1984 Ronald Reagan proposed a new law that declared that the legal drinking age must raised up to 21 instead of the age of 18. The law was forced upon the states by threatening them by stating that the government will reduce their highway funding until the states passed the law. Of course all the states eventually change their legal drinking age to 21. Some critics believe that this law’s results have been very successful, however the law possesses many insecurities, but certain programs can be arranged to help educate teenagers on alcohol.

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

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.

Society’s attitude towards the drinking age has been a major controversy in the United States. The attitudes regarding the drinking age have been based off statistics and society’s varying opinion. Alcohol is a toxic depressant that has a damaging effect on the human body. As a result, to prevent excessive alcoholic consumption, the ratification of the 18th amendment took place from 1919 to 1939. This established the Prohibition Act, which banned the transportation, manufacturing and selling of an alcoholic beverage. However, illegal production of alcohol continued to take place in secret. Gradually prohibition laws became difficult to enforce. As a result, the Prohibition Act was repealed in 1933. In 1984, congress mandated a law which would raise the drinking age from 18 to 21 through the National Minimum Drinking Age. Reasoning for mandating an older drinking age, was to enhance public safety and promote good health. In 1988, all 50 states enforced the drinking age to 21. The concern for the consumption of alcohol have targeted teenagers and young adults

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.

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

The repeal of prohibition by the twenty-first Amendment in December of 1933 allowed for each state to set its own alcohol consumption age. After the passage of the twenty-sixth Amendment, which lowered the national drinking age to eighteen, thirty states had lowered the minimum drinking age to eighteen, nineteen, or twenty (“Prohibition”). In 1984, the enactment of the National Minimum Drinking Age Act prompted states to raise the legal age for purchase of public possession of alcohol to twenty-one or risk losing millions in federal highway funds. By 1988, all fifty states had raised the minimum drinking age to twenty-one. The United States is one, of just a handful of countries to have a drinking age as high as twenty-one. Of the one hundred and ninety nations, one hundred and fifteen, or sixty-one percent, of the countries have a legal drinking age starting at eighteen or nineteen. In some countries such as the Central African Republic, the drinking age starts at ten ("Minimum Legal Drinking Age"). The United States should follow suit with most of the other countries and lower the drinking age to eighteen.

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

On July 17th, 1984, President Reagan passed the National Minimum Drinking Age Act (1). This meant that in order to purchase and publicly posses alcohol, one must be twenty-one years old (1). Today, many push for a reversion back to a drinking age of eighteen years old. The reasons on both sides are many, and all of them will be explored and diagnosed. As the reasons pile on, though, it will become clear that the drinking age should return to eighteen.

With that being said, it is regularly contended by teenagers that the drinking age is excessively high. They accept that in the event that they are qualified to vote, they may be sent to war and possibly die for our country at the age of eighteen; then they should be able to consume alcohol. Then again, the United States government saw issues with youth drinking and they chose to raise the drinking age. As extra motivation to enforce the age significance, the government proposed to stop all government subsiding of roadways to the states whose drinking was short of what twenty-one.

On July 17 of 1984 President Ronald Reagan signed to make the National Minimum Drinking Age Act a law. This law required all states to have a minimum drinking age of 21, if a state did not comply with this law they could face up to a 10% cut in funding for their federal highways (Tietjen). Since this act became a law there has been two distinct sides arguing whether they agree with the minimum drinking age, or whether they disagree. One side believes having a minimum drinking age makes alcohol seem like a “forbidden fruit” of sorts and because people always want what they can’t have, a minimum drinking age makes underage drinking an even bigger problem. The other side of this argument is basically that if a

Over the past twenty years the minimum legal drinking age has been twenty-one in all US states, but that has not stopped citizens of the United Sates from attempting to lower the age. Following the end of prohibition in the United Sates during the Great Depression, all states agreed on a set of twenty-one to be the legal drinking age. For almost forty years there was no change in the drinking age until a decrease in the age for voting occurred. This led to the gradual decrease of the minimum legal drinking age to somewhere between the ages of eighteen and twenty among twenty-one states. Recent data collected by Henry Wechsler and Toben F. Nelson, both of which obtain either a

Towards the end of the 1970 the President and the government were concerned about the legal drinking age. When the President, Ronald Reagan noticed the ridiculous amount of public health and safety issues he passed an act. For instance in 1982, President Ronald Reagan confronted a Presidential Commission officer on Drunk Driving because of the research that he found on younger drinking ages that had increased alcohol-related highway deaths. It was about thirty years ago when President Reagan passed a law in 1984, called the minimum drinking age act. The minimum drinking age act required America’s states to raise the age to 21 for purchasing and having public possession of alcohol by October 1986. For each state that don’t follow this law

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

Almost everyone can agree that alcohol should not be given or allowed to children or young adults under a certain age. Alcohol is a substance that is very dangerous and if you used incorrectly or immaturely the consequences can be great danger to the users or the ones around them. The topic of lowering the drinking age has been in discussion for many decades. “Between 1970 and 1976, 29 states lowered their age for drinking alcohol. The results were catastrophic. Highway deaths among teenagers and young adults skyrocketed. Almost immediately, states began raising the minimum drinking age again.” “In 1984, Congress passed the Uniform Drinking Age Act, which required states to have a minimum drinking age of 21 for all types of alcohol