Lowering The Drinking Age To 18 Essay

Underage drinking happens in the United States because it is not hard for an underage person to obtain alcohol. A study shows that 48.4% of people from the ages of sixteen and seventeen have tried alcohol and 52.2% of people between the ages of eighteen to twenty have tried alcohol (Reboussin, 2006). This shows the availability of alcohol to adolescents even with laws aimed to prevent this. This same study asked the questioned sample if they believed that most of their peers in the community drank alcohol and 72.7% answered yes. This stat represents that sixteen through twenty year olds know that they have easy access to alcohol. If the access is available to eighteen year olds anyway, why not lower the drinking age to eighteen and educate about the responsibility and dangers of drinking instead of acting like this is not a

Eighteen is the year where all people in the United States earn most of their rights and the right to purchase and consume alcohol should be added to this list. If the drinking age was lowered to eighteen, this would also lower the amount of sixteen and seventeen year olds drinking. After a person gets their license, the only thing they must find is someone to buy their alcohol and they are on their way to underage drinking. If the drinking age was lowered to eighteen, sixteen and seventeen year olds would be more willing to wait until the legal age to drink. With the drinking age at twenty-one, sixteen and seventeen year olds don’t have the patience to wait five years to begin drinking. With the drinking age at eighteen, it would only be a one to two year wait from a person getting their license. The drinking age should be lowered to eighteen because eighteen year olds can easily access alcohol even with the laws against it and if the drinking age was eighteen, it would lower the amount drinking that occurs at the ages of sixteen and