Any state can lower the age of legal drinking within their boundaries if they choose too. However, if any state chooses to lower the age, they will be cut off from highway funds from the government. So the debate has begun in many states whether lowering the drinking age would benefit our country or take it downhill. Many colleges are supporting the idea of change for reasons including reduced binge drinking among college students and eighteen year olds should be able to have a beer if they can fight and die for their country. Many people oppose the idea arguing eighteen to twenty year olds will only drink more if they are legally allowed to.
However many of them had opinions, but no facts to back it up. I realize that many people under the age of 21 cannot handle alcohol. I believe that at the age of 18 you should be able to consume, and purchase alcohol. If you’re able to smoke cigarettes or fight for your country there is no reason why you shouldn’t be able to drink. Substance abuse is a huge factor, but that is the choice the user made.
Maturity is the state or quality of being fully grown or developed, says Webster’s dictionary. It is something that can not be easily measured. The legal drinking age in the United States is 21. As of now the government feels that people under that age of 21 are too immature to consume alcohol, or at least to deal with the effects alcohol can have. I agree that many eighteen and nineteen-year-olds are not mature enough to cross the street on their own, but by looking in almost any newspaper there are just as many sixty-year olds who seem to have a hard time with it too.
An adult is conscious enough and has enough reason to know well from bad. This is the reason why they are allowed to choose their next president and decide to go or not to war. If the youth is given the right, and needed education since high school and at home about the consumption of alcohol just like it is done with drugs, cigarettes, and sexually transmitted diseases there would not be such a problem with people 18 years-old. Cigarettes are a more dangerous habit which causes more damage to our health compared to alcohol. So then, why is the intake of alcohol not allowed until the age of 21 and the consumption of cigarettes not?
Another reason the drinking age should be lowered is because in the United States you are considered a legal adult at 18. You can go to war and risk dying for your country when you are 18, you can also vote, buy cigarettes, but you can't buy alcohol. If a person is mature enough to make serious decisions
Is it right for those 18-20 to be denied alcohol consumption? Are they responsible enough to consume it? Despite the opposition insisting that drinking earlier on will only lead to potential harm for those under 21, an 18 year old is considered an adult, can serve in the military, can vote, and ultimately, should be allowed to make his or her own choices regarding alcohol consumption. As Ruth Engs, a professor of Health Sciences at Indiana University once stated, “the twenty-one year old drinking age law is not working, and is counterproductive, it behooves us as a nation to change our current prohibition law and to teach responsible drinking techniques for those who chose to consume alcoholic beverages (Eng, 1999).” To make an educated decision on the debate, however, both sides of the argument need to be evaluated. Why should the drinking age stay at 21?
This country will place them in grave circumstances and let someone’s blood be on their hands. People will let them take a bullet for the country. Yet, an 18 year old has to wait three more years to consume alcohol. Military men and women have every right to drink and purchase alcohol if they so choose. Do Americans really believe that since alcohol consumption at 18 is illegal, that is does not happen?
The teens wouldn’t know how to save their money. Which in the future, result in a poor life. At the age of 21, adults would’ve taken business classes and learned more about the economy and the act of saving money to get far in life. In conclusion, the question whether or not to change the voting law back to 21 (The 26th amendment of the constitution changed it to 18 in 1971); stands as a must. It will just provide a better future for our economy and would make a bigger impact.
Americans began to realize that as eighteen year olds, citizens were given many rights, and those should include voting and drinking. At eighteen, rights include serving the United State military, the ability to get married, and being able to legal sign contracts on your own “The right to drink should have a higher age of initation because of the dangers posed by drinking” (Procon, 2013). A person cannot legally gamble, adopt a child, and purchase a gun until age 21. Same restrictions should be applied to drinking. (Procon, 2013).
Many people enjoy the beverage and cannot wait until their 21st birthday to legally consume it. At eighteen you’re allowed to buy tobacco in most states, you can purchase a house, take out a vehicle loan, and be tried as an adult for crimes committed but not treated as an adult and be allowed to have a beer. So what made the government decide that twenty one is the appropriate legal drinking age when you are legally able to vote, join the military and be considered an adult by society at eighteen? Many people believe that the legal drinking age should be lowered to eighteen to match the legal age of majority in most states, however there is the other side of the argument that fights for the legal age to remain at twenty-one. Reasons the legal drinking age should be lowered are the fact that eighteen is the age of adulthood meaning as an adult you should be allowed to make your own responsible decisions about alcohol usage.