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Essay On Lowering The Drinking Age

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Imagine it’s your eighteenth birthday! Your friends and you are hanging out. You are one of the younger friends. Everyone around you is having a great time eating cake and some are even drinking, but you can’t drink. Even though it’s your eighteenth birthday and you are now legally responsible for all your actions from here on out, you can’t drink until you’re twenty-one. You go from having an amazing time to wishing you were allowed to drink. You make up your mind and grab a drink. After all, you will only drink one and who’s going to snitch on you. You drink and have a good time with your friends. The night ends and nothing goes wrong, but you feel guilty for breaking the law. This scenario could have turned out differently, the birthday …show more content…

Although, according to research mentioned in “Pro/Con: Should the Legal Drinking Age be Lowered to 18?” when the drinking age was raised to twenty-one years of age the teen alcohol-related deaths decreased (a). This caused the lower twenty’s age group’s alcohol-related fatalities to increase(a). In other words, this study demonstrates that the high legal drinking age doesn’t save as many lives as Americans are led to believe. It shows that Americans don’t know how to drink responsibly. If the drinking age was lower, Americans could drink in moderation with guidance from trusted adults. This matters because the Amethyst Initiative’s 130 college presidents say that since drinking underage is illegal, teens drink in private places with no supervision or guidance in drinking safely (b). This causes about forty percent of teens and students to develop bad drinking habits by the time they get to college according to Bret Sokolow, president of the National Center for Higher Education Risk Management (f). The legal drinking age should be lowered to eighteen because it is the lowest legal adult age. Young adults can take this opportunity to learn how to live and drink

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Over the past few decades, there has been much discourse regarding the drinking habits and behavior of college students. Since the passage of the Uniform Drinking Age Act of 1984, federal regulators have determined that the minimum legal drinking age (MLDA) should be 21 years old instead of 18. Since then, there have been a plethora of scientific studies to determine whether this was an effective means of combating irresponsible drinking habits. The aim of these studies was to determine the overall impact of the reduced drinking age in a ‘cause and effect’ way. However, the primary means of support for the MLDA being 21 was that drinking and driving as well as overall consumption among minors was reduced.

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Congress and Presidents’ tried to prevent the abuse of alcoholism by passing a law (National Minimum Age Drinking Act) to lower the possibilities of having more accidents, but with the law being created more than a million teens around the world haven’t abided by this law. Imagine that you had a bottle of whiskey that contained seventy-five percent of alcohol and later on you were wasted trying to get to your vehicle so you can drive home, but you got caught driving drunk by a police officer. What could you have done to prevent that from happening? 1) Being responsible and 2) Have a designated driver that would drive you home and 3) Don’t drink at all! Overwhelming the results of seventy-seventy percent of the American public had disagreed with lowering the drinking age from twenty-one years old to a younger age.

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Parents can teach their children how to drink responsibly. Normalizing alcohol consumption as something done responsibly in moderation will make drinking alcohol less of a taboo for young adults entering college. By lowering the drinking age, adults could openly model responsible drinking in establishments and at parties and irresponsible behavior would be discouraged. If the risks of alcohol were advertised more, it would remind people to drink responsibly.

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Fox News reports that 157 college-age individuals (ages 18 to 23) drank themselves to death from 1999 through 2005.” ( Niagin) By lowering the drinking age the number of alcohol related hospital visits and deaths would be significantly

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Underage drinking is a gigantic problem in the world we live in today, especially in the age range of 17-20 year olds. It is caused by teens wanting to be “cool” and have a sense of “freedom”. But lowering the drinking age would destroy a MLDA ( Minimum Legal Drinking Age) age that has been set at the age of 21 that since 1933. As a consequence, reports from 1970 show that there were more teenage car accidents due to setting the MLDA lower than 21. So not only would lowering the MLDA destroy the MLDA that has been since 1933 but also cause tragedies all over the USA.

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Prohibiting this age group from drinking in licensed locations influences them to drink in unsupervised places. Individuals will often drink in locations such as fraternities and/or parties where there are higher tendencies to participate in unsafe behavior. Despite increasing MLDA to 21 in 1984, the number of traffic accidents and fatalities that occurred within the 80s decreased less than that of countries whose legal drinking ages are already below 21 (Should the Drinking Age Be Lowered from 21 to a Younger Age?). In numerous European countries, teenagers at the age of 18 are allowed to drink in restaurants and other public places, under the supervision of trusted authority figures (Anderson). In the US, contrarily, teenagers at the age of 18 are not eligible to consume or purchase alcohol, and participate in these acts in risky areas where they are not under any supervision (Should the Drinking Age Be Lowered from 21 to a Younger Age?).

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When a person turns 18 they’re considered to be legal, and have the right to make their own decisions. You’d think they’d also be able to make the decision to whether they want to consume alcohol. When turning 18 a person is granted the right to vote, smoke cigarettes, get married, serve on a jury, sign certain contracts, and other things. If a person is mature enough to make a

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The United States has one of the highest drinking ages in the world, yet more than 70 percent of teens have consumed alcohol at least once in their life. There are more and more fatalities from alcohol and many believe this problem has to do with the legal drinking age. In a way it is kind of strange that at eighteen years old a person can join the military and be trusted to defend our country and take a bullet, yet they cannot be trusted to drink alcohol. At eighteen years old that is the age where a child becomes an adult; they can vote, purchase tobacco, and join the military not to mention other things. Alcohol is always going to have the same effects on people, no matter what age after a person is intoxicated they are not the same.

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Despite the heavy debates about what the minimum drinking age should be, it continues today to be the lead in the most decreasing alcohol consumption and reduced alcohol-related morbidity and mortality (Saylor, 2011). Today, a 21st birthday has became a right of passage. Making a direct link to between the minimum drinking age and binge drinking. “The recent Amethyst Initiative argues that a minimum legal drinking age (MLDA) of 21 has created a culture of heavy alcohol use on campuses by making drinking clandestine and extreme” (Saylor, 2011, pg 330).

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Alcohol comes in all varieties, from beer and wine to liquor and mixed drinks, and can play an important role in many social settings, from wild fraternity parties to elegant soirees. Due to alcohols mind altering affects, the drinker must make responsible decisions when it comes to how much to drink and what activities to participate in while under the influence. It has been greatly debated for many years at what age someone is old enough to make the decision about alcohol. In the United States the legal drinking age has gone back and forth between the ages of eighteen and twenty-one. The debate stems from the idea that an adult should have the freedom to choose to drink vs. the idea that a higher drinking age results in less drinking related

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You’re allowed to serve on a jury. You’re even allowed to join the Army. It doesn’t make sense that you can go out with a gun murder people, maybe even get killed but, you can’t have a sip of wine. As legal adults, they should be able to take the responsibility of drinking alcohol into their own hands. According to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, At least 37 states have some sort of exception in their drinking laws that allow underage people to drink at home and within the company of family members.

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Lowering the drinking age: risky or safe? When teenagers turn 18, they are told that they are adults and are sent into the world. They go to college, get a job, marry or join the military. They do grown-up things like vote, pay taxes and become parents, but they can 't go to the bar for a beer.

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A poll taken on July 2014 asked the public opinion of US adults for lowering the US legal drinking age from 21 to 18. Approximately 74% of the people opposed the idea, whereas roughly 25% of the people supported the idea ("Public Opinion" 1). The statistics indicate satisfaction among the majority of the people; however, with the current laws many issues arise that must be addressed concerning alcohol use. For starters, studies show an increase of dangerous drinking habits among young adults (Hall 2). In addition, the enforcement of the drinking laws and education on alcohol is insubstantial (Moyse, Fonder 3).

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Over the years, the legal drinking age in the United States has been heavily debated. Some argue that the legal age to drink should be 18 or 19 because people at that age are recognized as adults; others argue that the drinking age should be 21 because people who are able to drink should be more mature and have their lives better planned out. Although people are legally adults at 18, they are not yet mature adults; in fact, according to NRP, “emerging science about brain development suggests that most people don’t reach full maturity until the age 25” (“Brain”). Before earning the right to legally drink, people should allow their bodies to fully develop and gain a better knowledge of how to organize their lives. The drinking age should remain

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In fact, the law may increase the amount of eighteen to twenty year olds who do drink. It has been shown that, especially in college-age students, there is a tendency to not do what they are told, on the contrary, they will do the exact opposite. The problem with the drinking age being twenty-one is that some students drink purely out of defiance). The number of fatalities is down in all age groups, not just teenagers, and cars driven now are much safer than the cars that were being driven in the early 1980’s, and teenagers are much safer drivers, which can be attributed to the decreased amount of fatalities. Also, in other countries that have lower drinking ages, the number of fatalities has

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