Yuxuan Ren China
Drinking Age What age do you think is appropriate for people to drink alcohol? This problem has been a controversial issue for a long time. According to data from the International Center for Alcohol Policies, in 1988, all 50 US states unified the minimum legal drinking age (MLDA) for alcohol at 21 years of age. Some people assert the MLDA21 should be lowered to a younger age, while others expect it to remain the same. The age limit for alcohol is based on research which shows that underage people react differently to alcohol. They have not yet reached an age that they can handle alcohol responsibly. Drinking can cause irreversible consequences. Therefore, the drinking age shouldn’t be lowered because alcohol consumption can affect underage people’s mental and physical health, as well as their behavior. First, underage people are still immature. They are too young to understand the possible harmful effects about alcohol and generally lack awareness about the potential danger involved in drinking alcohol. Moreover, drunken underage people are weak. They gradually drop their defenses and open their minds to anyone. Their lacking necessary social experiences let them become individual targets for bad people that will not do anything except hurt them. Once this situation happens, drinking alcohol probably leads to serious consequences that will leaves underage people with an inerasable psychological shadow. Therefore, drinking alcohol puts underage people into dangerous situations in which they are unable to protect themselves. Second, drinking alcohol is harmful to underage people’s physical health. According to research from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), high alcohol consumption can lead to high blood pressure, irregular heartbeats, high triglycerides, obesity, which all in turn lead to heart attack or other heart related diseases, and even cancers. Underage people are at an important stage of physical growth; the organs and systems are developing. Therefore, alcohol intake is unfavorable for them, for it can affect their body's normal development. Some people might say that the drinking age limitation makes alcohol more attractive to underage people. They would do everything possible to get the drink without their parents’ protection. Granted, if the MLDA21 goes down, underage people might realize that drinking alcohol is not that big of an attraction for them.