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Lowering The Drinking Age To 18 Essay

429 Words2 Pages

Why should we allow 18 year olds to be able to drink if there minds and bodies are still developing? There are no safe drugs, alcohol is one of those drugs that is dangerous to the people’s health (Tamura). Science has proven that starting to drink at a younger age affects education and traffic accidents. This essay contains only a few of the many side effects of lowering the drinking age to 18. Education has a huge impact on our every day life. It determines how good of a job we receive and how that impacts what we can do or not do and what we can afford to buy or have. There are higher graduation rates from high school and college students who drink minimally or don’t drink at all (“Drinking While Young”). This is due to the negative effect that alcohol consumption has on people. The student’s attendance and academic performance is majorly impacted by the amount of alcohol that is consumed by each individual (Tamura). Traffic accidents is another bad affect of alcohol consumption at a younger age. Statistics show that highway drunken-drinking fatalities have declined precipitously since the drinking age was raised (Scharnberg). Young minds tend to believe that they are invincible and that nothing will happen to them or anyone else if they drive drunk. Alcohol-related automobile …show more content…

Many different unions, including: The American Medical Association, the National Transportation Safety Board, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety and even a number of alcohol distributors, have argued passionately against lowering the drinking age (Scharnberg). American’s attitudes towards drinking alcohol show widespread opposition to lowering the drinking age to 18 in all states. Also, a majority of the people support making penalties for underage drinking stricter than they are now to prevent many unfortunate accidents

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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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It can cause depression and he or she can develop criminal behavior which can lead to death. It has been shown that when the drinking age is lowered teens increase drinking. When Arizona lowered their age to nineteen, teenage drinking increased by thirty-five percent. Car accidents have been known to come from alcohol and research has proven that with the age being twenty-one, suicides, DUIS, and crime rate have decreased

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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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Yes, it is true that driving after consuming alcohol unnecessarily kills thousands of people a year; but it’s our own fault for driving intoxicated (Main). Many people discourage the change of the drinking age because not only are another 5,000 people killed a year thanks to alcohol, it is also a major factor in violence, rapes, and assaults (Main). However, consider this, if violence such as this comes from drunken anger, wouldn’t the best answer be to discourage drinking to the point of intoxication rather than postpone education and awareness? In a survey, over three quarters of adults questioned believe that lowering the drinking age would be harmful to youth by making alcohol more accessible at a younger age (Main). On the contrary, it would only promote early exposure and experience.

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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.

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Among all the countries in the world, the United States of America is one of the few countries that requires people to be twenty-one years old before legally being allowed to drink. Due to the fact that a majority of countries require citizens to be eighteen before drinking, there is a bit of controversy across the states as to whether the drinking age should be lowered to match the majority of the world. But what good is lowering the drinking age in the united states when the drinking culture has not changed and will not change simply because the law does? Before any discussion of the drinking age can even be hand, let us look at how we can influence teen drinking culture.

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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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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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The adolescent brain is still growth and undergoing many changes that alcohol can influence their decision. There is a significant change going on in the youth’s brain that can easily be influence by the consumption of alcohol causing a big impact to their brain as it fully form (Jones and Lachman, 2011). I believe that the drinking age should be change from 21 to 25 this give the teen enough time to be involve in responsible activities by the time they are 25 years of age they can make better priority with alcohol being the less. According to Jones and Lachman (2011), States that mad an adjustment to their minimal legal drinking age (MLDA) to match the voting age from 21to 18 in1971 saw a significant increase in traffic accidents among ages 18-20years.

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