Increasing The Drinking Age Persuasive Essay

You Drink, You Drive, You Lose

Every day, 28 people in the United States die as result of drunk or impaired driving. That equates to one death every 51 minutes, and about 10,000 fatalities per year. This includes people who are the drunk driver and kill themselves and/or other people, and people whose lives end because of a drunk driver. Not to mention that 16% of fatal crashes involve children 14 years of age and younger, which is horrifying to think about. In 2015, alcohol was responsible for 29% of all fatal automobile accidents in the United States. The numbers have significantly dropped since the 80’s, but 10,000 people still lose their lives every year due to impaired driving (Drunk Driving, 2017). Increasing the drinking age, decreasing the BAC (blood alcohol concentration) levels, increasing the severity of punishments, and increasing prevention efforts could help decrease the number of deaths by drunk driving each year. Increasing prevention efforts and methods of enforcement against drunk driving could save American lives.

First, the drinking age must increase. Now I know that increasing the age will not change much but it is bound to help a little bit. The current drinking age in the United

A BAC of 0.08 is the legal amount of alcohol allowable to consume before reaching stages of impairment. The NHTSA (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration) believes that all states should make 0.08 BAC the legal level for drunk driving. The NHTSA declares that states that have enacted a 0.08 BAC law have had far less fatal accidents concerning alcohol over the past years, which is great news (Alcohol, 2004). However, we should try to lower the legal BAC level a few numbers to save even more lives. People with a BAC level of 0.08 still experience dull senses and are dangerous on the roads even if they are within the legal range (See Fig. 1 &