Cammesha Moody;Edison,The Drinking Age Should Not be Lowered

The legal drinking age is currently 21. Although, in the distant past the legal drinking age was 18 I believe that the age limit should remain the same or even increase.

 Although there are officials who believe that the drinking age should be lowered back to 18, since the increase of the age limit from 18 to 21, there has been a decrease in the number of DUI arrests,decrease in death rates,and less access to younger teens.

• In 1984, Congress passed the National Minimum Purchase Age Act, to encourage each state to enact a minimum legal purchase age (MLPA) of 21 by 1986. The result was impressive: an estimated 1,071 lives were saved in 1987 alone. From 1975 - 1996, the estimated number of lives saved reached nearly 17,000.(2) In addition to a 63% decline in alcohol-related crash fatalities among young drivers since 1982, findings show that the MLPA has decreased the number of DWI arrests, youth suicides, marijuana use, crime, and alcohol consumption by youth.(3,4)

• Age restrictions on alcohol consumption were put in place to reduce the number of drunk-driving deaths among teens.

One consequence, writes Steve Chapman, is that “a lot fewer teenagers now end their lives in alcohol-related traffic accidents. Since 1982 the number of youngsters killed in crashes involving a drunken teenage driver has plunged by 63 percent.” Laurie Davies concurs: “We’ve had tremendous declines in alcohol-related fatalities among 16-to-20 age group in the past 20 years.”

• Some may argue that returning the legal drinking age to 18 would reduce the allure of alcohol as a “forbidden fruit,” but according to the Alcohol Policies Project, “lowering the drinking age will make alcohol more available to an even younger population, replacing “forbidden fruit’ with `low-hanging fruit.’”

If 18-year-olds are allowed legal access to alcohol, younger teens will have a greater opportunity to obtain it illegally from older peers. According to Chapman, “Setting the drinking age at 21 can be criticized as a highly imperfect way of keeping booze away from college-age kids, who have devised numerous ways to get it. But it does hinder them at least a little. Perhaps more important, the existing law presents even greater obstacles for younger teens.”

Although keeping the drinking age at 21 does not completely prevent teen drinking, lowering the drinking age to 18 would increase the harm to society. The Age-21 law has been successful in decreasing alcohol consumption among teenagers.

At the age of 18 you are allowed to vote ,enlist in the military,along with many other things. Drinking should not be something you are allowed to do simply because of the harm that can be caused to and by many lives.

This entry was posted on 20. November 2009 at 20:57 and is filed under Social Problems. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.