Futures will Drown with Alcohol Approximately 25,000 lives have been saved by the end of 2005 due to the 21 drinking age law which is around 1,000 lives per year (Dean-Mooney 2). There has not always been a set national drinking age law until the late 1900s. According to Michelle Minton, a consumer at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the 1984 National Minimum Drinking Age Act set the legal drinking age at 21 years old. This would allow congress to withhold ten percent of the highway funds the state would receive if the state did not set their legal drinking age to the national drinking age (1). Although congress would withhold state highway funds, this did not encourage states to change their drinking age to the national drinking age …show more content…
According to Nicole Belford, writer for The Spectator at the University of Wisconsin, thousands of dollars would be saved and countless hours spent on enforcing drinking laws if the minimum drinking age was decreased to 18 years old (2). What needs to be noticed is the good that is coming from the money spent and the countless hours spent enforcing this law. Hundreds of lives are saved every year due to the 21 drinking age law (Dean-Mooney 2). This significant number of lives saved each year show that the law is working. Even if this law saves one life, it still worth the effort and cost because every life is precious. Since 1984, high school drinking has declined substantially due to the law and penalties (Lessing 3). This is another example of how the 21 drinking law is effective and has been effective for many years. If a state or many states lowered their minimum drinking age to 18, then this would decrease highway funding from congress (Belford 2). Lowering the drinking age law would only put the states’ interests first instead of the thousands of lives that could be negatively affected if the law was changed. Apart from the harmful effects that alcohol can have on the maturing brain of young adults, health risks associated with alcohol are also a