BreAnna O’Neal
ENGL 1020
Dr. Fritts
October 9, 2014 Should the Drinking Age be Lowered? The drinking age being raised was a result of what was perceived to be a drunk driving epidemic. The comprehensive approach with a goal of reducing the number of alcohol related deaths on the nation’s highways. The big question is should the legal drinking age be lowered back to eight-teen? Most people will say yes it should because at the age of eight-teen you can choose to enlist in the military. By law people are considered an adult when they reach the age of eight-teen. Are they mature enough to know they had too much to drink? Some people think that this law may be a little out dated, and that it is time to rethink the drinking age. I believe that the law isn’t out of date and if the law is going to be lowered it needs to be done after month’s even years of researching the pros and cons.
Over 25,000 lives has been saved in the United States because of the legal drinking age law being twenty-one. “The law continues to prevent tragedies, decreasing crashes by an estimated 16 percent and keeping young people safer from many risk.” (MADD) Multiple of activities have ages of initiation, you have to be six-teen to drive, eight-teen to vote, and thirty-five to become a presidential candidate. Based on research which shows that young people react differently to alcohol. Teens are more likely to get drunk twice as fast as adults, but have more trouble knowing when to stop. (MADD)
When a person reaches the age of eight-teen they are typically just getting used to the new found independence from either their parents or living on their own at college. They don’t completely have a great sense of knowing when they have had too much to drink or when enough is enough. All their lives they had their parents telling them what to do, when to do it, and when they have messed up, someone fixed it for them. While it seems like it would be okay to let an eight-teen year old the right to legally drink, they just aren’t mentally mature enough to be able to purchase alcohol whenever he or she pleases. Young people who begin to drink in their early adulthood are more likely to end up with alcohol addiction problems. (Chooseresponsibility.org)
If young adults could choose to drink responsibly it would be possible to think about lowering the drinking age. “Binge drinking, which is defined as five or more drinks for men and four or more drinks for women within a two-hour period, can be extremely dangerous, particularly for inexperienced drinkers.” (www. caron.org) The health problems it can cause to a teenager who drinks too young or drinks too much, has to be considered also. When teenagers are drinking they don’t considered the risk that they are taking. The law is doing what it is designed for its keeping the alcohol related traffic fatalities among young adults to a low number.
After many different revisions to the law about the legal drinking age was changed and set forth in 1984. There’s multiple options a teenager or young adults under the age of twenty-one can get alcohol including: they can get alcohol from friends who are over the age of twenty-one, stealing it from their parents, and going to stores that will sell to underage consumers. This relates to prohibition in a couple ways, prohibition removed alcohol from public settings, legal age to twenty-one has forced drinking underground, behind closed doors, and far away from supervised public settings.
The United States is one of the few countries that has such a relatively high minimum legal drinking age. According to a Huffington Post article “despite the legal drinking age 17.5 percent of consumer spending for alcohol was under that age group.” (Huffington Post)
Everybody will admit that if they were told not to do something they pushed their limits, and done it anyways. Same with the drinking age if they are told that they have to wait until your twenty-one, it makes them want