But the main reason for doing so is “breaking the law.” 87% of high school seniors have used alcohol. That means that a large quantity of teens under the age of 17 to 18 have used alcohol before. We all know the reason why teenager drink, is common since. Just the feel that they get of breaking the law is huge. Being rebel and not following the rules is an important role of a teenager life somehow.
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.
Lowering the drinking age has been a widely debated topic since the law was passed back in 1984 to set the minimum drinking age to 21. The National Minimum Drinking Age Act of 1984 required all of the states to change their legal drinking age, if the states refused to comply with the law, they would lose money under the Federal Aid Highway Act. (Engs, 1998). One of the strongest proponents of this law was MADD or Mother’s Against Drunk Driving. They believed that making the legal drinking age 21 would lower the number of alcohol-related car crash deaths.
Kevin Reeves Philosophy Essay People who support marijuana prohibition do so unjustly with little, no, or even false justification to support their beliefs. They say we need to keep marijuana illegal to keep our society from the terrible addiction and hardships it causes. These arguments are not consistent with the fact that the two most deadly drugs in America are legal. Alcohol and tobacco lead the way in American deaths every year, killing on average nearly 500,000 people annually. It has yet to be reported that anyone has ever died from using marijuana.
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.
No longer restricted by rules and regulations imposed by their parents, students often use their independence irresponsibly, engaging in reckless drinking habits. As a result of the high drinking age, many students face their first time drinking with no sense of how to drink responsibly. To make matters worse, the majority of college students are underage, as typical freshman, sophomores and juniors fall between the ages of 18 and 20. According to the New York Times, college binge drinking is exacerbated by the restrictive legal drinking age of 21. Relatively new, inexperienced drinkers dominate the college campus, leading to a threatening culture of extreme
When a teen gets to that age all they think about is driving, but when they turn that age parents just begin to worry. “Adrian Lund, president of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, a research group funded by the auto insurance industry, acknowledged the idea is "a tough sell," but noted that car crashes are the leading cause of death among teenagers” (Irvine). That is a big statistic to ignore. Pennsylvania had 242 deaths which involved a teenage driver in 2008, third among all 50 states behind that of Texas, 650 deaths, and Florida with 516 deaths (California DMV). Teenagers are reckless and we must do everything reasonable to prevent deaths.
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
When it comes to the law there is always an opinion, some are for it and some are against it, currently the legal drinking age is 21. Approximately 5,000 people each year under the age of 21 die as a result to underage drinking. 1,900 of these deaths occur from motor vehicle accidents. 1,600 occur as a result of a homicide. 300 deaths occur from suicide.
Maturity plays a big part of the reason why the MLDA should stay the same. Anyone under the age of 21 is most likely to be not mature or responsible enough. Being responsible as a teenager can be tough, especially when there is alcohol involved. The article “The minimum drinking age: facts and fallacies” by Traci Toomey, Carolyn Rosefeld, and Alexander Wagenaar states that from 1970 to 1975 the legal drinking age in the United States was lowered to eighteen, nineteen or twenty in 29 states. The article goes on to say that several studies show that the lowered MLDA in the 29 states had an immediate impact on motor vehicles crashes increased among teens.