The Debate Over The Drinking Age: Lowering It To Nineteen

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Ever since Prohibition, our country has constantly debated the issue of alcohol. Should it be legal or not? Who should be allowed to drink alcohol? But the question at hand today is: What should be the legal drinking age? I believe the drinking age should be lowered down from twenty-one to nineteen years old. America is fighting too hard against underage drinking, in turn, weakening itself. Obviously our tactics of fighting aren’t making alcohol any safer in America. The problem has become severe and leaving the legal age at twenty-one is not helping. Alcohol is a problem among Americans and we should enact a law that leads to a better path for underage Americans. A law that sets the drinking age at nineteen, in addition to measures including education, will have a positive effect on all Americans’ lives. Education is the best way to promote safe drinking regardless of a person’s age therefore it is the key to changing the outlook on drinking. We need to reform the law so we can begin moving forward. The culture America has set up around drinking is not a safe one. The easiest way to promote safe drinking is by changing the law to an age that is more reasonable. Today the law marks the legal drinking age twenty-one, a strange cutoff age to drink. The age twenty-one has no other significance than the ability to legally drink. It isn’t the “beginning” of the working world or the “end” of the college life and it seems like a purely random number with no logical decision behind it. By lowering the drinking age I am not implying it should be so low as to allow high school students to drink, but an age of nineteen is more logical. At nineteen, it would not be accessible to high school students. Nearly all nineteen year olds have graduated; therefore they are not a threat as promoters of underage drinking on high school campuses. A common argument against lowering the
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