Essay On Underage Drinking

Improved Essays
Mercer County, Ohio has one of the highest underage drinking percentages per capita in the country. As teens, we think we are indestructible and we are in control of our lives and everything in it, but we all must face reality. Social media is full of teenagers partying and drinking, they think it makes them popular and cool, but it is really just ruining their lives. Every weekend there is at least one party in my county and have watched students show up to sporting events drunk because they want to have fun. This high percentage of underage drinking greatly upsets me. Alcohol affects the health of people as well as their mental health, especially teenagers. It can cause brain damage and alcohol poisoning and can also lead to becoming addicted. …show more content…
I joined this board my senior year to help my classmates. Through this program I believe I can help make a difference. My solution to the underage drinking problem is simple, stricter athletic requirements. In my opinion, the only way to stop the partying and the underage drinking is to start at the base of the problem, the popular kids and athletes. According to the OHSAA rule book, consuming alcohol while in season of a sport will result in the immediate release from the team.Students are warned and must sign a contract before they are allowed to participate in a sport each year. They know and agree to the rules and consequences of consuming alcohol, yet still decide to break the rules when they consume alcohol.
In my school, the students who hosts parties and who do most of the drinking. If schools and the Ohio High School Athletic Association required athletes to take alcohol tests weekly, I would make drinking on the weekends less desirable. Athletes have to be on a sports team to do well in a sport and if students get kicked off of a team for drinking, they can’t win games or play in college. Alcohol can stay in a person’s body for two to three days. If students drink on a Friday night after a football game, the alcohol will most likely still be in their system on

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    The article What Colleges Need to Know Now: An Update on College Drinking Research, published by the U.S Department of Health and Human Services (USDHHS), looks at the different aspects of college drinking as well as its consequences and the measures taken to intervene and prevent the repercussions of drinking, such as serious injury, death, DWI, and assault (USDHHS, 2007, p. 1). , What Colleges Need to Know Now: An Update on College Drinking Research examines several ways of intervening and treating college alcohol addiction and puts them into action ranging from individual approaches where one would monitor a student mandated for alcohol use. For instance, in a study 10 students, mandated to partake in a substance abuse prevention program…

    • 773 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The Affluenza Teen Case

    • 841 Words
    • 4 Pages

    “Being a teenager is an amazing time and a hard time… you get the best and the worst as a teen” but sometimes teenagers get carried away. The ”Affluenza Teen” case has prompted many people to discuss social issues such as drunk driving and reckless behavior. 16 year old Ethan Couch killed four people in a drunk driving accident; however, his defense team argued that he suffered from “Affluenza”. Although he had a blood alcohol level three times the legal limit, the judge only sentenced Ethan to ten years of probation and time in a rehab facility versus twenty years behind bars. With this in mind, there was no justice served.…

    • 841 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    A huge debate in the United States is what the minimum drinking age should be. Some believe that it should be eighteen and others believe that it should stay at twenty-one. Some argue that one is legal at eighteen, so people should be able to drink also. A major counter argument that people argue is that other than the United States, Iceland, Japan, South Korea, and Thailand the drinking age is eighteen (Griggs). People argue that these countries need to catch up with the rest of the world.…

    • 2159 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Do you know someone that has consumed alcohol at an early age? Growing up alcohol was very evident in my local junior high and high school. My peers consistently talked about going out on the weekends, sometimes even the week and boasting about being the biggest drinker at a local bar they snuck in to or even going as far as describing extravagant narratives about not remembering the night before from partying too extensively. Underage drinking on college campuses are a common issue nationwide. While students and faculty alike are all aware of the issue not much is done or can be done to end underage consumption.…

    • 1606 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Decent Essays

    Studies show that 73% of college students drink sometime which includes 7.4 drinks a week are consumed by males. The bad thing about this alcohol problem is that students have been reported missing classes and studies show that one fifth of kids have failed an exam due to an alcohol problem. The saddest part about it is that alcohol is involved with 90% sexual assaults on college campuses. Lastly, there has been tons of research saying that alcohol has the ability to affect a teenager's brain more than an adult's brain.…

    • 469 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    It is up to the professors, friends, coaches and peers around the athletes to identify the symptoms of substance abuse when related to alcohol. Signs and symptoms of alcohol abuse may include; excessive drinking more than three times a week, drinking alone, the need to black-out, lying about drinking, gaining weight, not going to class due to hangovers and feeling of guilt about drinking. These are just several examples of signs an athlete may have a problem with alcohol. It is important to find the right treatment for each individual. With student-athletes, it is especially important to find treatment that will not cause further…

    • 1487 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Lowering the Drinking Age The day kids turn 18 they are no longer kids, they are adults. As adults there are so many things you can do. From voting to buying a house, but there is one thing 18 year olds can’t do… drink.…

    • 1071 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Sexual Assault On Campus

    • 635 Words
    • 3 Pages

    While more than half of sexual assaults against women of college age occur off campus, on campus assaults are a problem that college and universities can and should do more to address. The best statistics show there is a correlation between 3 factors, alcohol use, sorority membership, and class status, and sexual assault on campus. To combat these trends colleges and universities need to address these factors while taking into account that any measures they take not simply move the problem from campus to off campus locations. This means that the measures taken should be centered on raising awareness, encouraging responsibility, and holding offenders accountable in a just way, while also addressing the campus code of conduct.…

    • 635 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The first thing I want to point out is on alcoholpolicymd.com, it says, “Annual alcohol use by high school seniors dropped from 87% in 1983 (before passage of the national MLDA law) to 73.2% in 2000.” This obviously shows that even though there still is illegal drinking, it has dropped since MLDA 21. If we lowered the legal drinking age I think that the numbers would fly off the charts, the only reason that the 27.8% is not drinking is because they are scared of going to jail. In addition, I found this on the same website, “alcohol producers heavily target the college demographic through magazine, billboard, internet, and television advertising, as well as spring break promotions, on-site marketing, contests, concerts, and sporting events.” This shows that alcohol companies are trying to get young adults to see that it is fun to drink and have parties.…

    • 665 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    There has been an ongoing debate in regards to lowering the drinking age from 21 to 18 year old in The United States. Some suggest If we were to consider lowering the drinking age to 18 this could mean young people at younger ages would be able to have access to alcohol. If is not uncommon for 21 year olds to provide minors or those under 21 with alcoholic beverages. Reducing the drinking age to 18 could possibly result in younger teenagers, even as young as 13 having access to alcohol. Minors find was to get around the 21-year-old limit and will continue to do so in the future.…

    • 1544 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Many people would consider 18 the age of transforming into adulthood. The right to vote, buying cigarettes, and getting married are just a few of the many aspects that come along with turning eighteen years old. However, in the United States, drinking alcohol at the age of 18 is considered illegal. According to a 2014 study, the United States is just one of 12 countries whose drinking age is restricted to 21 years and older. Binge drinking, brain development, drunk related crashes, and teenagers responsibility has caused enormous controversy as to whether this alcohol restriction should be lowered or not.…

    • 1482 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Great Essays

    Lowering The Drinking Age

    • 2045 Words
    • 9 Pages

    Alcoholism, death from alcohol poisoning, and drunk driving are problems that exists in today’s world. Most if not all of these problems involve minors and can be linked to drinking underage. Every state in the union has a legal drinking age of twenty-one years old. The purpose of this law is to keep minors out of danger: away from drunk driving, alcohol poisoning, and injuring the brain before it is fully developed. Unsafe situations are created by the current laws by it’s ineffectiveness to eliminate underage drinking, driving while drunk, and deaths from alcohol poisoning.…

    • 2045 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Allowing Adults to Act Like Adults. Of the 190 other countries in this world, 61% have a legal drinking age of 18. This is the age that many teenagers get a first job, a first car, and try new things for the first time. Although these young adults can have almost unlimited responsibility, drinking is one thing they cannot do. If the United States were to lower the drinking age, it would allow for new opportunities to make everybody’s life easier.…

    • 967 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Internal and external damage to the body can always be found in alcoholics. Many often to do realize the amount of calories that are in alcoholic drinks, which eventually will lead to obesity and weight gain. Also, a lot of students that experience the “freshman 15” weight gain is due to one, the lack of exercise, but two, the amount of party time freshman do within their first year. Alcohol, being one of potential deadliest toxins one can put in their body, causes several serious illnesses that may be prolonged throughout one’s life time. Such illnesses that involve several different types of cancers, liver disease, kidney disease and or failure, heart disease, high blood pressure, inflamed stomach lining or bleeding in the stomach, and exposure to many other serious illnesses (“College Drinking”).…

    • 1439 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Persuasive Essay On Teenage Drinking

    • 1069 Words
    • 5 Pages
    • 3 Works Cited

    However when the teen goes to college is the most important, it's when they are the most vulnerable. It's been estimated that nearly half of all college students and 80 percent of students who live in fraternity houses engage in binge drinking (consuming four or more drinks in a row (Binge 7). College is a place where alcohol is highly available to just about anyone all it takes is some older friends or friends with fake IDs. Students under 21 are actually more likely to be binge drinkers than are older students (Binge…

    • 1069 Words
    • 5 Pages
    • 3 Works Cited
    Superior Essays