Drinking

Problem:

A person should be able to drink legally at the age of eighteen. The law that states that it is legal for a person to drink at the age of twenty-one should be changed so that an eighteen-year-old would be allowed to drink alcohol legally. At 18, you are now an adult and you are expected to act that way. Legally you can vote, get married, buy a lottery ticket, serve in the military and be tried as an adult in the United States court system. These are very important responsibilities that are yours to take care of when you become an adult. “Good grief…let them [also] take the responsibility for the consumption of an adult beverage” (Conway 2000).

Solutions:

In order to lower the drinking age from 21 to 18, I would:

1) Find laws in other states and countries as examples.

We should look to the European countries as an example to solve our problems in the United States. “The Europeans teach their children to respect [alcohol] from an early age” (Conway 2000). Theses countries do not have the minimum age of consumption at 21 and this has been proven to make a difference.

There is less underage drinking because drinking is part of their culture and lifestyle. It starts in the household with their family and they are taught to drink smart and socially. Social drinking is acceptable; it is a time to have fun while still being in control.

New Zealand changed their legal age to 18 in 1989. The slogan “You’re not just a teen when you’re 18” shows that the New Zealand government is taking the change very seriously and so should the men and women that are of the legal age. Maybe the United States should look around the world to try and solve our own problems. “Isn’t it ironic that the United States has the highest minimum drinking age and for some strange reason the largest problem with underage consumption” (Toomey & Rosenfeld, 1996)? This statement in itself should be one very good point when considering the change of the legal age to 18.

2) Alcohol Consumption among minors:

Some might look at this report and argue that at least the amount of alcohol consumption is decreasing among young people since the drinking age has been increased, but what most don’t know is that this has actually been occurring since about 1980. This was long before the states were required to raise the drinking age. Why stop a trend that has been working for 7 years prior to the raising of the drinking age? There has also been a huge increase in younger people that drink more abusively when they do drink. This change has occurred after the drinking age was increased.

3) The affect of lowering the drinking age on Drinking and Driving:

Some may also think that younger people are involved in more drinking and driving accidents and decreasing the drinking age will only increase this problem. The thing about this fact that most people tend to not think about is that teens tend to abuse alcohol no more than people that fall in the age category of 21 to 40 year olds. When you take into account that teenagers drive more miles than older drivers do, the statistics do not show a higher rate of alcohol-related traffic fatalities for teenagers than older groups

3) Laws behind underage Drinking

In 1987 the Minimum Legal Drinking Age Law was passed to “make it illegal for any person who is less than 21 years old to either purchase, possess, or consume alcoholic beverages or to misrepresent their age to obtain such beverages” (Policy and legislation, 1996). In the same year the Adult Responsibility Law was also enacted to try to decrease underage drinking. This law was made to “prohibit a person age 21 or older from purchasing alcoholic beverages for an underage person or from giving of furnishing such beverages to a person under age 21” (Shook, 2000).

4) Why the drinking age is unfair

As someone who is twenty-one, eighteen-year-olds are given all of the same responsibilities except that of being able to drink. In 1970, Congress passed the 26th Amendment to the Constitution allowing