Teenagers are reckless and we must do everything reasonable to prevent deaths. Raising the driving age will cut the number of accidents on the roads. Teenage drivers are much more likely to have accidents than older drivers. In the USA there were over 30 000 deaths in crashes involving 15-17 year old drivers between 1995 and 2004 (Rocky Mountain Insurance Information Association, RMIIA). Raising the driving age by a year or two will greatly reduce these accidents and deaths.
Europeans have more control and responsibility with drinking than American youth because alcohol is a part of their daily lives. Since it is illegal to purchase alcohol while under 21 in America, children binge drink, pass out, and many get their stomach pumped in hospitals to drain alcohol from their bodies. Many children drive after they have been drinking and this can cause serious damage to themselves and others. Americans legally become adults when 18; the government allows them to vote, to serve on juries, to get married and to enter the military. Since the government gives 18 year olds those responsibilities, young American adults should legally be allowed to drink alcohol.
This raised his eyebrows and he started too put together numbers to figure up the effect of what this many more teenagers would have on the society. He believed that six percent of them would become repeat offenders, and that about 30,000 more of them would become violent criminals. Two other professors John Diluilo of Princeton and James Fox of Northwestern, also believed that with the staggering number of children that were about to become teenagers was going to be a nightmare for the future of our juvenile justice system. In figure 8.1 on page 107 it shows the actual and projected population of the youth between ages thirteen and seventeen from 1960 to 2010. This table is focused on the ages thirteen through seventeen, because that is the age that had the highest juvenile arrest statistics.
Being rebel and not following the rules is an important role of a teenager life somehow. (Teen Ink, 1989) The repeal of alcohol prohibition by the 21st Amendment on Dec. 5, 1933 allowed each state to set its own alcohol consumption laws. At that time, most states established the MLDA for alcohol at 21 years of age, although two states set an MLDA of 21 for men and 18 for women: Illinois (1933-1961) and Oklahoma (1933-1976). The 1976 US Supreme Court case Craig v. Boren (1.58 MB) ruled 7-2 that this age difference violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. Following the July 1, 1971 passage of the 26th Amendment, which lowered the legal voting age from 21 to 18 years of age, 30 US states lowered their MLDA to 18, 19, or 20; by 1982, only 14 states still had an MLDA of 21.
Between 1970 and 1975, “there was an increase in teenage car accidents because 29 states in the United States had a MLDA lower than 21” ("Drinking Age ProCon.org”). “These changes occurred when the minimum age for other activities, such as voting, also were being lowered” ("Minimum Legal Drinking Age"). Scientists began doing “several studies in the 1970’s that showed the effects of lowering the MLDA” ("Minimum Legal Drinking Age"). The studies “found that motor vehicle crashes increased significantly among teens when the MLDA was
In 2007 former Middlebury College President John McCardell founded Choose Responsibility (CR). Choose Responsibility was founded as a nonprofit group focused on the consumption and recklessness of alcohol by young adults. They feel that the legal drinking age can be lowered as long as better education about alcohol consumption is provided to young adults while in high school. Recently over one hundred college presidents signed The Amethyst Initiative, a public statement calling for an informed and dispassionate public debate over the effects of the twenty one year old drinking age. BU Today
Pros and Cons of Lowering the Drinking Age In today’s society, many young adults turn to alcohol to self-treat depression, stress, and other psychological illnesses. The legal drinking age in the United States of America is twenty-one. It has been that way since the late 1980s, but recently several states have been petitioning and campaigning to get that age lowered. The majority of the petitioners compare the drinking age to the age at which you are considered an adult, eighteen. For most of the people and organizations that support lowering the drinking age, their case is a person can fight and die for their country, serve jury duty , vote for President, but cannot have a beer or two while doing so.
Alcohol can put this sort of development to a stop, which puts the young adult at a much higher risk for addiction, depression, violence, and increases the chances of suicide. Having the drinking age set at 21 lowers the overall amount of alcohol consumption. There was a study back in 2002 to prove this. The results showed an 87% decrease in alcohol consumption with a higher legal drinking age. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) did some research in 2009 and found that nighttime drivers’ percentage on the weekend with a BAC of .08 had dropped from 5.4% back in 1986 when there was a lower drinking age, to 2.2 %.
The government’s most recent drug survey, the 2005 National Survey on Drug Use and Health, “over 800,000 adolescents ages 12-17 sold illegal drugs during the previous 12 months preceding.” (NSDUH). Marijuana has damaged and brought chaos to lives of many young Americans. Medically, it is not addictive, but some people say that they begin to form a habit, and it becomes a psychological, rather than physical, addiction. Although marijuana is less harmful than other substances that are legal, chances are that if more people smoked marijuana because it became legal, there would be an increase in health problems. A study was done by the DEA in 2004 in which 19.1 million Americans aged 12 or older used illicit drugs in the 30 days prior to the study.
Therefore that is why the drinking age shouldn’t be lowered to less than 21 years of age. Descriptive Argument: Alcohol is a big problem in the United States of America. In fact; more than 75,000 deaths are attributable to alcohol consumption each year and the economic costs associated with alcohol problems total more than $184 billion annually (US Department of justice2002). While about 43 percent of adult drinkers report heavy drinking on one or more occasions in the past month, 50 percent of 12- to 14-year-old drinkers, 65 percent of 15- to 17-yearold drinkers and 72 percent of 18- to 20-year-old drinkers report heavy drinking in the past month (US Department of Justice 2002).While Americans are bombarded with $4 billion of alcohol marketing each year. Alcohol advertising and product placements are very common and often occur on television and in radio shows for which the majority of the audience is underage, on Internet sites attractive to young people, and on billboards and in retail outlets where young people are frequently present.