Drinking Age To 18 Essay

Alcohol and the involvement of consuming alcoholic beverages for the purpose of having a good time is highly glorified in American culture. Drinking serves as a rite of passage for college students who are enjoying their first breath of independence. However, alcohol-related deaths are among one of the leading causes of death in the United States. This is the reason there are somewhat-strict regulations placed on the consumption and sale of alcohol, and rightfully so. It is imperative to treat something known to cause so much harm as a serious matter. Many people may argue in favor of reducing the national drinking age to 18 because 18 seems to be the golden age in the United States when adolescents are allowed to do just about anything—except

The state of its legality was even called to question and demolished with the passing of the Eighteenth Amendment in 1919, which wholly prohibited the production and sale of alcohol in the United States. This prohibition, however, only lasted about a decade and came to an end with the ratification of the Twenty-First Amendment in 1933. For a long period after the reinstatement of alcohol legality, the national minimum drinking age was at 18 until President Ronald Reagan oversaw the passing od the Drinking Age Act of 1984, which increased the national minimum drinking age to 21. All states at that time were required to increase their drinking age or risk losing 10 percent of their highway funding (Minimum Drinking Age 2015). Congress decided to implement the Drinking Age Act as a result of the overwhelming number of deaths caused by teenage drinking and driving (Liebschutz 1985). In support of this law there are certain sciences that state that a person’s brain is not even fully developed at the tender age of 18 and their ability to form responsible decisions is dangerously impaired if you factor in the consumption of alcohol. Yet, still there are those who argue in opposition of such a “high” drinking age