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.
This act required all states to raise their legal age to twenty one; if they refused, their annual federal highway dollars would be cut by ten percent. This act was backed by Mothers Against Drunk Drivers (MADD). According to MADD the drinking age of twenty one has saved some seventeen thousand lives since 1988. (Daniloff) One of the main groups leading the charge to have the legal age lowered is college presidents all over the United States. In 2007 former Middlebury College President John McCardell founded Choose Responsibility (CR).
3.) What does projecting our youths population do for our justice system? In the year 1995 is when people began too project the next centuries juvenile crime rates. James Wilson figured that the nation at the end of the decade in the 1990's that there would be roughly one million more teenagers in the delinquent ages of fourteen to seventeen than there was in 1995. 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.
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.
In 1982, President Ronald Reagan set up a commission to investigate drunk driving in the United States. After the investigation was finished, and the reports analyzed, one of the recommendations from that commission was the implementation of a national drinking age of 21. MADD was at the forefront of the imposition of the National Minimum Drinking Age Act of 1984, which rose the federal drinking age to 21. Those states who felt that implementation of the law was unreasonable would see a 10% loss of federal highway dollars. The purpose was to fully have each states collaboration on this issue and to fix
Since the government gives 18 year olds those responsibilities, young American adults should legally be allowed to drink alcohol. The drinking age needs to be lowered from 21 to 18 because it could prevent alcohol-induced accidents and more enforcement should be put on preventing drunk driving. Drunk driving is a serious issue that occurs in the United States. According to the website The Cool Spot, “…alcohol is linked with an estimated 5,00 deaths in people under age 21 each year” (Too Much Online). Something must be done to reduce those innocent children from dying and it can happen by lowering the drinking age.
In 1984 the United States passed a national law that required all states to impose laws restricting the purchase and possession of alcohol in public places to people under the age 21. This law is referred to as “The National Minimum Drinking Age Act of 1984”. Due to all of the accidents caused by drinking among people between the ages of 18 – 20, a provision was attached that required all states to comply or they would face a reduction in the federal funds allotted to them for the maintance of their highways under the Federal Highway Aid Act. Many felt that the provision on the national law was a form of blackmail. As a result it created a huge controversy over the issue and lead to the debate of whether or nor the legal drinking age should be 18 or 21 years old.
Whether the legal drinking age should be lowered to eighteen or remain at twenty one is a big issue right now to lots of people. The younger crowd will most likely argue that it should be lowered to eighteen, but they have many legit reasons why it should be. The legal drinking age should be lowered because it is already easily accessible to them, the percentage of reckless teen alcohol abusers will be reduced and also because at the age of eighteen you are legally considered an adult. Almost all teens between the ages of 14-17 have tried alcohol before. Majority of the time it is given to them by someone between the ages of 18-21.
Every year in the United States, countless college students acquire underage drinking citations and are eventually charged with underage drinking. These charges are a black spot on the permanent record of said students and greatly affect their ability to get a job after they graduate. The fact that the number of students charged with underage drinking do not change from year to year clearly indicates that students who are not of legal age are going to continue to consume alcohol regardless of the law. That being said, why haven’t we considered lowering the drinking age to eighteen? I believe that this reason and many other reasons should steer us as a country to consider finally lowering the legal age of consumption of alcohol.
“But by the late 70s, the minimum drinking age was all over the map, literally, with various states having tacked on an extra year or two.” The statistics speak for their selves; clearly the proper drinking age has fluctuated a few times before a concrete law for drinking was set in stone. Finally some odd years later a group called ‘Mothers Against Drunk Driving’ ordered all fifty states to comply to making the proper drinking age 21. “…in 1984, the federal government, backed by Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD), ordered all 50 states to raise their legal drinking age to 21 years old or suffer a 10 percent cut in their annual federal highway dollars.” This action performed by Mothers Against Drunk Driving raised quite a few eyebrows, only initiating more arguments and more chaos. However, the refined age limit has simply saved more lives than harming them. “According to MADD, the National Minimum Drinking Age Act (NMDAA) has saved some 17,000 lives on the highways since 1988.” These set of