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.
Alcohol and Substance Abuse in College It comes as no surprise that binge drinking and substance abuse are easily connected to college students in the United States. According to the National Institute on Alcohol and Alcoholism, “almost half of college student drinkers partake in heavy episodic consumption” which is defined as consuming five or more drinks in a row for men, and four or more drinks for women in a single outing. Are colleges really doing enough to discourage the problem of heavy drinking in the student body? A study published online in Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research says that colleges can do more to fight the alcohol-loving culture in students. The study points out failures in the colleges' attempts to drive
Patrick Burns Dr. Michealian College Writing 7 December 2012 Fight at 18, Drink at 18 There has been an ongoing controversy in the United States on whether the drinking age should be lowered to 18 like most of the world or if it should stay at 21. Underage drinking has been a disputed issue for years, which begs the question: why is it not under control? Teenagers continue to buy alcohol with fake IDs, drink illegally, and get into bars. It has been proven that these underage incidents are happening on not only on college campuses but in high school settings as well. Clearly there are many reasons why drinking age should be lowered to 18, the most obvious being that too many people are drinking before they are 21.
Lowering the legal drinking age All around the world people use alcohol for a number of different reasons; it is used when people are peer pressured, when under stress, during a celebration, when sad, and sometimes just for fun. These are just a few examples of when alcohol may come into the picture. The legal drinking age is currently twenty-one, but do you really believe that everyone waits that long to take their first sip of alcohol. There have been many debates whether they should legally lower the drinking to eighteen, because once you turn 18 you are considered an adult which means you can vote, join the armed forces and do much more. So why shouldn’t you be able to start drinking by the age of eighteen?
The people that binge drink the most have more severe problems. These people are more likely, than people who do not drink excessively, to miss class, get behind in their homework or class assignments, involve themselves with sexual activity, not using protection during sexual activity, getting caught by campus security, or maybe even wounded, or seriously injured. “Such heavy alcohol use among American college students has received considerable attention because of high alcohol-related morbidity and mortality is widely considered a public health concern with serious immediate and long-term consequences” (Saylor, 2011). Many college campuses have considered taking serious actions to control the behavior of college students that are binge drinking. Administrators on college campuses have establish a zero tolerance policy for alcohol so that the campus is a dry campus.
Why can’t kids do the same thing? As “Fact Sheet” states there are an abundant amount of consequences to underage drinking. Youth who choose to drink before the age of 21 are more likely to experience school problems such as higher absence and poor or failing grades. Also the issues of social problems (such as fighting and lack of participation in youth activities), legal problems (arrests for driving or physically hurting some while drunk), physical problems (hangovers or illnesses), and unwanted/unplanned/ unprotected sexual activity are consequences. Along with disruption of normal and sexual development, physical and sexual assault, higher risk for suicide and homicide, alcohol-related car crashes and other unintentional injuries (burns, falls and drowning), memory problems, abuse of other drugs , changes in brain development that may have life-long effects, and death from alcohol poisoning.
The issue of binge drinking has been a problem on college campuses for decades. Binge drinking has many horrible effects, but the problem starts with the causes for it. If the causes could be controlled then the issue would not get out of hand. Many college students give different causes for their drinking problems, and experts on the subject have their explanations as well (Courtney & Polich, 2009). The causes of underage drinking include peer pressure, family history, low self-esteem, and of course curiosity (Courtney & Polich, 2009).
Another argument that a functional theorist might make is that alcoholics exist in order to show people what they do not want to become when they are drinking. These are the people who are puking drunk at every party, the people who start drinking the minute they wake up, and the people who can’t even walk themselves home after a party or a night on the town. These are the people in college parties who are falling over, being rude towards the opposite sex, acting stupid, and starting fights. No one wants to be “that guy”, so a functional theorist might argue that seeing alcoholics getting out of
Leana Berube College Composition Persuasive Essay There is no doubt that underage drinking has been a huge problem in the United States since the ban of prohibition was lifted. There is something about how alcohol is illegal that gives underage drinkers a thrill. Every year around this time, millions of American kids graduate from high school, throw massive parties and get drunk. Police end up arresting a lot of these kids, causing them legal trouble for months or even years. So, every year around this time, there's a new debate about whether the drinking age should lower or even abolish.
Almost every high school student gets into a situation that they don’t want to be in. Peer pressure is an example of one of these situations. Peer pressure of doing drugs can lead to a high school athlete to get himself in a big trouble. Who is to say that he will be the next to get randomly drug tested. Since June of 1995, the US Supreme Court has been all for random drug interscholastic student athlete drug testing.