An average person must wait until age 16 to start driving, age 18 to marry without parental consent, and age 35 to become president (Minton). The age limit for alcohol is based on research which shows that young people react differently to alcohol. This means that typically anyone is able to acknowledge to lower the drinking age. In Rober Voas' article "There's no benefit to lowering the drinking age, " he states that lowering the age for drinking alcohol would just make matters worse, along with a paragraph that states: "I keep hearing the same refrains: 'If you're old enough to go to war, you should be old enough to drink,' or 'the drinking-age law just increases the desire for the forbidden fruit,' or 'lower crash rates are due to tougher enforcement, not the 21 law,' or "Europeans let their kids drink, so they learn how to be more responsible,' or finally, 'I did it when I was a kid, and I'm OK.'"
Sam Duyck Mr. McWaters English 101 11:00 September 18, 2011 Much of the article, “Getting Serious about Eradicating Binge Drinking,” by author Henry Wechsler has a biased view on drinking and the way people drink in college. This piece of work gives many problems and solutions to binge drinking on a college campus. College is not full of binge drinkers or people who wreak havoc across campus. Binge drinking is a bad thing when over used or not controlled. Colleges and people all over the country are doing things to slow down binge drinking but it will never be eradicated in teens and young adults.
If peers encourage others to drink alcohol underage, often teens will drink to feel more accepted by their peers. Schools can counter this influence by sending out a “don’t drink” message. Often schools have classes, such as health, which will encourage students to not drink and drive, or to say “no” to alcohol, but Levine claims that many schools do not have these types of classes. According to the Amethyst Initiative, 18 year-olds are not
Should the Legal Drinking Age be Lowered? Alcohol has taken the lives of many young adults and in order to stop this chain reaction from occurring once again with new generations there needs to be a change. Young adults under 21 drink now because it is illegal and it is what causes them to drink irresponsibly and causes them to do many regrettable things, knowing that they are going against authority. On college campuses nationwide students are currently drinking illegally while under the age of 21 and if the drinking age was changed the whole aspect of drinking would be looked at differently. Lowering the drinking age, I feel would be the best solution to solving the underground drinking problem, it would allow for drinking to be more “open.” Having the drinking age at 21 allows for there to me more difficulty in keeping track of the kids who use it because they do it secretly and tend to abuse it more.
Since they are finally free from their parents or guardians, they want to enjoy their freedom by doing as you can call it “activities” that they were not allow to do when they were living with their parents because most parents won’t allow them to do such an activity. Also most of binge drinkers among college students, does not know that they are binge drinking or not. One of the major reasons that college students binge drink is severe and consistent pressure from their fellow students. Most of the college students, especially new enrolled students consider binge drinking is the way to adulthood. When most of the students go to the party, they end up drinking over their limit.
Eighteen-year-olds can run for public office, vote, serve in the military and get married. So, the lower-drinking-age question has to be considered in the context of all those other decisions," Jordan said. "My concern and that of many of the other presidents who signed the initiative is that we aren't doing our students a favor by avoiding this. Saying that keeping the minimum age at 21 is reducing highway deaths is ignoring the bigger problem." Dr. George
The drinking age isn't meant to be a big deal, but the first couple years of lowering the drinking age could cause many students to be reckless. There are many responsibilities that come along with drinking at a low age, most importantly drinking and driving. Lowering the age will reduce all such problems, but at first will seem extremely hectic. Lowering the current drinking age of 21-and-over will allow young Americans, most of who are perfectly capable of drinking responsibly; to no longer drink in private or in short amounts of time, thus alleviating potentially dangerous conditions. Drinking privately is extremely unsafe and when kids are in a situation they can't handle, they can then ask for help.
European countries have a lower legal drinking and appear to have lesser alcohol related problems. Trying to enforce the drinking age of 21 is ineffective and pricey. Even though the law says one has to be 21, teen drinking is a major problem and there will never be a way to stop it. It would be more effective to spend money on educating the youth about how to drink responsibly rather than attempt to enforce the drinking age of 21 and continuously waste money and effort.” For 21 years, the legal drinking age has been set at 21 years. This has been an issue topic for quite some time now, and more states are considering revising the law.
In a sense it acts as a factor of reverse psychologically, by making the alcohol illegal to youth, it tempts them to want to drink even more. In few studies it shows that children who are not being subjected to not drink alcohol, actually do not need protection from such laws. These children have freedom to learn the ways of drinking in the comfort of their own homes and not deal with the stress of hiding drinking habits by family. Also with being allowed to drink at home, it prevents the youth from learning dangerous drinking habits from peers, when rather their have adult figures to guide them with their drinking. They learn how to control their drinking and what to expect from the effects of the alcohol (Nayak 141-142).
The drinking age should be lowered because of many studies showing that to be 21 to drink legally is not helping anything. One main study to support my opinion is the irresponsible manner we drink as underage drinkers and the percentages from now to then when you could be 18 and drink legally. My second issue is how easy it is to get alcohol and you can bust as many people as you can but your never going to stop underage drinking. My other point I like to point out is the history of laws being passed and what has changed now from then in the drinking laws. In this report I?m going to express how drinking is not to be seen as poison or a really bad thing to do if we just handle the way we drink in a more responsible manner.