Lowering the drinking age would increase the teen alcohol related car crashes each year. People like to think if you can serve in the war and risk your life you should be old enough to drink. Or since Europeans let their children drink, our American children should be allowed to drink as well. What most people don’t know
security and severely drop the demand for fake IDs. Rising the drinking age hasn’t prevent underage drinking; it has caused 18-20 year olds to over drink and become addicted to alcohol. The drinking age should be lowered to 18 because when you turn 18 you earm so many rights, why not be able to drink and celebrate a little. Drunk driving is most common between the ages of 21-24 instead of 18-20 years old. When you are first allowed to drink is when people get inane and don’t know how to handle alcohol and driving.
One of the main arguments for the lowering of the legal drinking age from 21 to 18 is that “If youth are allowed to make other choices, such as voting, going to war, or getting married, then they should be given the choice to consume alcohol to, even if it hurts them” (SpeakUp! Prevention Coalition, 2012). This is the most common argument that I've heard when it comes to this topic. This also seems to be the best argument because if a person is old enough to die for their country or vote for any type of public office, why shouldn't they be able to drink alcohol at the same age? Another common argument used in support of lowering the legal drinking age is that young people still do it, even though it's illegal.
Running Head: LOWER LEGAL DRINKING AGE Lowering the Legal Drinking Age July 12, 2009 The drinking age is a complex issue that needs to be addressed. The legal drinking age has fluctuated variously throughout the last thirty years changing from twenty-one to eighteen and then back to twenty-one again. Many people would say that the current age is fine because the later in life a person can drink the later they can drink and drive. As this is true there might be a better solution to the problem. The legal drinking age should be lowered from twenty-one years old to eighteen years old because the United States has the highest legal age in the world, eighteen year old soldiers
This country would be far more productive if alcohol is not present to kids under the age of twenty-one. Having the legal drinking age lowered to eighteen creates more conflicts than benefits, so it is a more intelligent decision to leave the age at twenty-one. Underage drinking can be defined as someone under the minimum legal drinking age (MLDA), which is twenty-one in the US. Along with
The American Medical Association concluded that alcohol use during adolescence and young adulthood causes damage to memory and learning capabilities. In a study in the 2006 Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine found teens who drink before age 14 had a lifetime risk of alcohol dependence of 47% compared to that of those who began drinking at age 21(Roan). A higher drinking age has resulted in lower rates of alcohol consumption and traffic crashes (Roan), and significant reductions in the amount of damage due to drinking (Keen). Still, roughly 100,000 people die every year due to the effects of alcohol (Keen). Why should we lower the drinking age even more and raise that number?
Researchers say “American young people engage in “binge drinking” far too often”. This is all caused from a twenty-one drinking age. The easiest way to eliminate this would to be lowering the drinking age where young adults can be monitored and learn how to drink the safe way. If young adults were allowed to drink in bars whenever they wanted, or if they could buy alcohol from a liquor store without finding someone to go on a booze run for them, then binge drinking would become less
In the 1960’s and 1970’s when many states had lowered the MLDA, besides the rise in drunk-driving deaths, studies showed that people raised from childhood in under-21 states were involved in higher rates of alcohol and drug use as adults, and had a higher rate of homicides and suicides. (Moses, 2011) This in turn convinced federal law makers to raise the MLDA again to 21. However, in order to encourage states to comply, the federal government would tighten their purse strings and states would receive little or no funding towards highways. So while there are those who do not necessarily care one way or the other about the actual age limit on alcohol consumption, they do prefer having the federal
Drinking Age Some argue to keep the drinking age at 21 because the brain does not finish maturing until the age of 25. It is even worse to have people drinking at age 18. Setting the drinking age at 21 has not stopped teen drinking; instead, it has increased underage binge drinking, leading to more health and life-endangering behavior by teens. Because alcohol affects everyone drastically, the drinking age should remain at 21 to keep young adults from having poor health and making poor decisions. One statistic that would argue for raising the drinking age is an examination of death rates from homicide and vehicle accidents.
They believe that by making the drinking age a lower age, alcohol would become more accepted in American society and it would encourage more people to engage in drinking, at a younger age, as well as adults. Mothers Against Drunk Driving fight for keeping the drinking age at 21 because their organization believes that a younger drinking age would result in more drunk drivers. They think that the younger people are who are legally aloud to drink, the more irresponsible America’s alcohol-drinking people will be. Also, some people think that lowering the drinking age to 18 will result in more youth participating in binge drinking. When people binge drink, they are more likely to engage in other illegal