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Lowering The Drinking Age To 18 Essay

1412 Words6 Pages

All in favor of lowering the drinking age raise your hands. Looking around the college campus many raise their hands, but fail to vote on the subject. Many complain about wanting change, but yet take no action to do so. It’s college students who can make the biggest change in lowering the drinking age to 18. To begin with the topic of lowering the drinking age has been heavily debated since the early 2000’s almost 16 years after the current drinking age was introduced. It was introduced in 1984 as the minimum drinking age act. By 1989 all 50 states had changed the minimum drinking age to 21. Although the current legal age helps prevent alcohol related deaths the legal U.S. drinking age should be lowered to 18. First of all the current drinking …show more content…

This means that the current legal drinking age helps prevent alcohol related deaths within colleges. The current age helps prevent college students from binge drinking and driving while under the influence of alcohol. “Of course, in the end teens will binge-drink no matter what the law says… the current drinking age undeniably reduces teen binge-drinking and death a little bit, without any bad side-effects(Sanghavi).” No matter what the law is college students will continue to purchase and consume alcohol. College campus’ do not enforce the law of being 21 to purchase or consume alcohol harshly enough; many college students are being forced into the underground market of alcohol. “ From 1977 to 2007, the percentage of 12th graders drinking at least monthly fell from 70 percent to 45 percent—almost immediately after the law was enacted, and lastingly. Fatal car crashes involving drunk young adults dipped 32 percent, resulting in 1,000 fewer lives lost per year(Sanghavi).” After the current drinking age was enacted there was fewer deaths related to alcohol and less college students binge-drinking. The current age has been proven to keep college students safer. So there is no argument that can say that the current age limit does nothing to help keep the youth safer. However the current age limit has its flaws and that is the main reason it needs to be lowered to try and eliminate those

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My opinion on the whole situation is that the drinking age should be lowered because of binge drinking. Since the drinking age has been twenty-one it has not stopped underage teens for drinking and has actually caused more problems. Binge drinking has especially been caught in college. With the mix of ages ranging anywhere from around 17-24 years old it’s easy for teens to fall under peer pressure. The opposing side to this argument says however that lowering the drinking age would be...”Pushing the drinking problem further down to 16-and 17-year olds.”

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829 Words | 4 Pages

There has always been the conflict over whether or not the legal drinking age should be changed. Some people protest that by lowering the drinking age younger people know what to expect about the effects of alcohol when they get older. Others believe drinking at a young age can lead to addiction and alcoholism, liver failure, and other serious problems thus increasing death rates and alcoholics. There are more serious negative outcomes that happen with teen drinking such as drunk driving and unintentional terrible decision making. ( Con 2016)

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America decided to do things differently than other countries for a reason. Lowering the age for drinking would lead to a disaster. The law needs to remain at an age of 21 to keep the next generation safe as long as possible. Drinking is extremely harmful and potentially fatal, this is coupled with its addictability, add young adults and the consequences are terrible. Many people follow the law and other countries experience more issues with underage drinking than the US.

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1257 Words | 6 Pages

The establishment of the US Minimum Drinking Age (MLDA) dates back to the year 1984 where President Ronald Reagan signed the National Minimum Drinking Age Act on July 17 firstly unifying and raising the drinking age to 21 in all 50 states. Its goal is it to effectively combat drunken driving. According to the law any state that would lower the MLDA to eighteen will face a 10% shortcut of federal funding. However since

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People have said that if the drinking age was lowered it was lower the risk of everything else that is happening with alcohol problems. For example, more than one hundred and thirty people have signed a petition initiated in the 2008 in support of the idea. Since the mid 1930’s, the legal drinking age in the United States has been set at twenty-one. At some point there was no uniform drinking age, with some states choosing eighteen, nineteen and even twenty as the legal age for drinking. Back then, it was safe to drink because everyone knew everyone.

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821 Words | 4 Pages

If the age is lowered down to 18 is dangerous for the young adults life and can damage their emotional state of mind. When alcohol consumption interferes with this early adult brain development, the potential for chronic problems such as greater vulnerability to addiction, dangerous risk-taking behavior, reduced decision-making ability, memory loss, depression, violence, and suicide is greater. it is important to not decrease the drinking age because it can affect so many young adults life and can really mess of their state of mind and they can become depressed and violent and can mess up their life and change them as a person. Between 1970 and 1990, the suicide rate of 18- to 20-year-old youths living in states with an 18-year MLDA was 8% higher than the suicide rate among 18- to 20-year-old youths in states with a 21-year MLDA.

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954 Words | 4 Pages

Have you ever experienced the side effects due to drinking? Well drinking can be one of the most dangerous things there is. In today’s society there is a lot of controversial whether to lower the drinking age to 18 or not. However, there are many risky affects teens could face if the drinking age is 18, it can affect teens mental healths and lead to health problems, increase in fatal car accidents and poor performances.

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660 Words | 3 Pages

In 1984, The Minimum Legal Drinking Age Act was established; changing the way alcohol is held today for those younger than the age 21. The whole purpose of the act was to reduce the number of fatalities by those under the age of 21. While it is indeed setting a restriction and trying to prevent this, it became a double-edged sword. As told by Henry Wechsler and Toben Nelson, they state that since drinking isn’t allowed till

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686 Words | 3 Pages

Lowering the drinking age is a popular argument, simply because many individuals believe it would cause an increase of drinking and driving accidents ,but others believe it would lower underage consumption. Because there is a possibility that a change in the legal drinking age law could occur, “this law has been one of the most studied in our history” (Dean- Mooney 1). A large amount of our population in the United States consume alcohol, therefore many individuals have a strong opinion as to which way the law will go. Lowering the drinking age to 18 would solve the many different problems of underage drinking, rather than create more of the problems. Underage drinking is one of the largest and most common problems on college campuses in the United States, and lowering the legal drinking age from twenty- one to eighteen-years-old would help manage the situation.

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751 Words | 4 Pages

Eventually all 50 states set their minimum drinking age at 21 rather than losing millions in funding, and it was established (State). The drinking age in America was 21. Today this topic is highly debated. Should the legal drinking age be lowered? Adulthood and rights of United States citizens is a highly controversial argument in the debate of lowering the legal drinking age.

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1710 Words | 7 Pages

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.

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803 Words | 4 Pages

Not too long ago, people who were under the age of 21 were allowed to drink but, that all changed one day. In 1984, the National Minimum Drinking Age Act was put into place. This law simply told the states to raise the minimum drinking age to 21, or loose about ten percent of highway funding. As a result, shortly after, states were flying to put this law into play to keep that funding.

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827 Words | 4 Pages

People will oppose to this law, but at the age of 18 an adolescent's brain is not fully developed yet. Underage drinking is a common action in today’s society. What kids do not know is the effect that underage drinking has on their brain. Since the brain is not fully developed at the age of 18, drinking

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903 Words | 4 Pages

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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1300 Words | 6 Pages

“ [The drinking age] is unfavorable because it forces youth to consume alcohol in unsupervised places that are risky and consumption may be abused.” The idea is, if the drinking age is lowered, youth will be able to drink in open, public places that can be supervised by others. By being public, it would decrease the risky behavior seen with alcohol in private, unsupervised settings. Pomata also asserts, “The age restriction inspires undesirable activities just as the National Prohibition Act did.” Some undesirable activities that are associated with underage drinking include the making and distributing of fake ID’s.

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