Should We Lower the Legal Drinking Age?

    In Taiwan, when you turn 18, you can drink and buy alcohol legally. However, the legal drinking age in the United States has been 21 years since 1920. The Minimum Legal Drinking Age Act (MLDA) raised the legal drinking age to 21 in hopes that a higher legal drinking age could help to prevent alcohol-related deaths and injuries among youths. Yet in recent years, there are a lots voice calling for amending the law to lower the legal drinking age. There has been controversy on the effectiveness of the law because people who consider the legal drinking age should be 21 think that the law is beneficial, while the opposite side said that most young people still drink before turning 21. This issue is about various aspects, and each side has strong evidence and statistic to support their point.

     The major controversy over the issue is that whether the age-21 limit helps proving alcohol-related problems. Those who support the age-21 limit think that a higher minimum legal drinking age is effective in preventing alcohol-related deaths and injuries among youth. When the MLDA has been lowered, injury and death rates increase, and when the MLDA is increased, death and injury rates decline (Toomey, Roseneeld, Wagenaar 261). There’s also statistics on traffic fatalities prove the law works. Since the law was enacted, college students who reported drinking fell from 82 percent in 1980 to 67 percent in 2000, and annual alcohol use by high school seniors has dropped from 77 percent in 1991 to 66 percent in 2006. The most important is, traffic fatalities among drivers ages 18 to 20 have fallen by an estimated 13 percent, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (Roan 253). However, a lot of college administrators and health professionals aren't convinced that the age-21 laws help curb problem drinking. They think that not all the evidence is on one side of the question. For example, in addition to the lower drinking age, the reduction in traffic fatalities may be credited to other safety measures, such as the use of restraints, better automobile design, improved hospital trauma care and stricter traffic laws (Roan 254,255).

     Besides, there are concern about the harmful health effects of drinking at a young age. According to a research in 2002 from the American Medical Association, alcohol use during adolescence and young adulthood causes damage to memory and learning capabilities. Also, a study in the 2006 Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine found that teens who began drinking before age 14 had a lifetime risk of alcohol dependence of 47 percent compared with 9 percent for those who began drinking at 21. For each additional year under age 21 of drinking, the greater the odds he or she would develop alcohol dependence (Roan 254). On the other hand, McCardell, who supports to lower the age limit, agrees that studies show the younger someone starts drinking, the greater the likelihood of developing alcohol dependence. But, he says, the 2006 Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine study shows that between 13 and 18, the effect is dramatic. But between 18 and 21 it's visible but insignificant. According to the study, the correlation is greatest at younger ages, and he thought that what we ought to look at is not keeping 18-year-olds from drinking, it's keeping 13-year-olds from drinking (Roan 255).