Perils Of Prohibition: Why We Should Lower The Drinking Age

This past summer I was out to lunch with my mother. As the mature adolescent I am, I asked her to by me a beer so I could enjoy my food. She obliged, and we enjoyed our lunch with little commotion. Towards the end of our meal, the restaurant manager came up to me and asked if I was 21. Instead of lying and having to go through a whole conversation with the manager, I said “no, I am 18”. Before I could even finish that sentence, the manager took my drink, and told my mother that she should have known better. This really made me quite frustrated and I began to ask my self more and more since then “why can’t I legally drink yet? If I am allowed to vote and serve for my country at 18, why can’t I drink legally at 18?” Thus begins the question that

She wrote about how she is the mother of an 18-year-old heading to her freshman year of college. Like most mothers, Whelan has a large concern on the topic of teen binge drinking. She believes that the prohibition of selling alcohol to responsible 18 to 20 year olds “creates an atmosphere where binge drinking and alcohol abuse have become a problem. American teens, unlike their European peers, don 't learn how to drink gradually, safely and in moderation” (Whalen). She is a big advocate of lowering the age because of all of the things 18 year olds can do, such as driving, voting, paying taxes, fighting in war, etc. “Though the per capita consumption of alcohol in France, Spain and Portugal is higher than in the United States, the rate of alcoholism and alcohol abuse is lower. A glass of wine at dinner is normal practice,” she says. “Banning drinking by young people marks it a badge of adulthood--a tantalizing forbidden fruit” (Whalen). She stresses the fact that if teenagers are taught early on, they will be well educated in knowing the dangers of violently drinking. If the age does become lowered, she wants the punishments of alcohol abuse to be more intensified to show what can happen. She believes it’s ok not to drink, but if they do, they should be taught to drink in

There has been research that shows the negative effects of lowering the drinking age that goes way beyond drunken incidents. The February 2013 issue of “Mental Health Weekly Digest” showed the findings of Dr. Andrew D. Plunk of Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. It is quite obvious that the most abused drug by adolescents is alcohol, and it can have lasting effects. "Furthermore, human brain development continues into the third decade of life, raising concern that heavy adolescent alcohol misuse may produce cognitive deficits and impairment in memory and attention” Plank proclaimed. “Numerous studies have linked binge drinking to poorer academic performance (Mental Health Weekly Digest).” He surveyed citizens born between 1949 and 1972, a total of 24,088 people. In his research, he saw the correlation. Even though he saw that the lowered drinking age didn’t necessarily create greater alcohol consumption, but he saw that more people were binge drinking at a high level. He realized that since they were drinking before the age was increased, they were more alcohol dependent going into adulthood. He noted that college kids aren’t the only concern for binge drinking, but all of the people who have been drinking consistently for