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Persuasive Essay On Lowering The Drinking Age

588 Words3 Pages

The United States has one of the highest drinking ages in the world, yet more than 70 percent of teens have consumed alcohol at least once in their life. There are more and more fatalities from alcohol and many believe this problem has to do with the legal drinking age. In a way it is kind of strange that at eighteen years old a person can join the military and be trusted to defend our country and take a bullet, yet they cannot be trusted to drink alcohol. At eighteen years old that is the age where a child becomes an adult; they can vote, purchase tobacco, and join the military not to mention other things. Alcohol is always going to have the same effects on people, no matter what age after a person is intoxicated they are not the same. So it seems like many of …show more content…

The U.S. has had a history with alcohol, with prohibition and stuff, not to mention one of the highest drinking ages around the world. The legal drinking age used to be dependent upon the state you were in; so different states had different ages, though they were very similar. In the 60s and 70s the ages were lowered in many states which resulted in more and more alcohol related fatalities amongst automobiles. This makes it seem as though lowering the drinking age actually caused more fatalities, which yes, it did directly, but indirectly the laws need to be taken into account. Today if a person is caught driving while under the influence; they will get a DUI, which is very bad. Back then and even fifteen years ago the laws were not nearly as strict and it was almost acceptable to drive after drinking. Shortly after all these deaths were starting to be noticed and the national drinking age was raised to twenty one. The amount of teenage drinking incidents fell significantly and as time went on stricter laws were put in place to insure teenagers do not drink. This seems almost ironic because nearly 70 percent of teens have consumed

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